Lance Mackey wins second straight Iditarod
Published 10:28 am Wednesday, March 12, 2008
NOME, Alaska — Lance Mackey won his second consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Wednesday morning, completing the 1,100-mile journey in just under 9½ days.
The 37-year-old throat cancer survivor and his 11 dogs crossed the finish line under Nome’s burled arch at 2:46 a.m. ADT Wednesday.
He yelled “Yeah, baby!” as he drove his team down Nome’s Front Street. Fans mobbed him along the final 10 blocks, whooping and cheering and slapping his hands while chanting his name.
“I’m not much to brag very often, but damn, I’m going to this time,” said Mackey, from Fairbanks, Alaska, whose father and brother are past Iditarod winners. “I don’t know exactly how to explain it. I’m just blessed with an incredible dog team.”
In its 36th running, the Iditarod commemorates a run by sled dogs in 1925 to deliver lifesaving diphtheria serum to Nome.
Mackey’s win was a repeat of his 2007 feat, when he became the first musher to win back-to-back runs in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the Iditarod. Last month, he won his fourth straight Yukon Quest and headed into the Iditarod aiming for another double win.
Mackey used many of the same dogs that competed in those races in the trek across some of Alaska’s harshest terrain.
At the Nome finish line, his family greeted him and he took congratulatory phone calls from his father, Dick Mackey, and Gov. Sarah Palin.
Palin told Mackey: “You’re a hero, and truly an inspiration to all of us.”
For much of the race Mackey tussled for the lead with four-time winner Jeff King, who closely tailed him from checkpoint to checkpoint. He also struggled with dogs stricken with diarrhea and slowed by unseasonably warm weather that marked much of the trail.
Mackey’s dogs also quarreled on the trail. He had to drop Hobo — a leader Mackey called the speed and driving force of the team — who was badly injured in an ongoing rivalry with Larry, another leader considered the brains of the pack. Some of his dogs were coughing and one was in heat.
King, a 51-year-old musher from Denali Park, ran most of the trail with a full team of 16 dogs that looked remarkably fresh and alert as the race progressed.
King finally dropped two dogs Tuesday at the checkpoint in White Mountain. When he crossed the finish line at 4:05 a.m., a grinning Mackey was there to shake his hand.
“It was tough competition, but an easy race,” King said at the burled arch.
