March 12, 2008

• Greyfox is ecstatic.

  My husband phoned me as soon as he was awake today, to learn who had won the Iditarod.  He was going, “YES! YES!” exulting over the victory by “our boy Lance.”

  Lance has been his favorite musher for a couple of years now, ever since he learned that the guy is not only a cancer survivor, but also has a history of drug use and has done jail time.

  I’ve had a soft spot for Lance ever since his fellow mushers awarded him the “Ugly Truck Trophy.”  One time, somebody started to steal his truck, but it stalled before they got it out of the parking lot so they left it for better pickings.  He gave the new truck he won in last year’s Iditarod to his wife and was still having truck trouble at the start of this year’s race.  He just won another new truck, along with $69,000 to go with the $5,000 he won for being first to the Yukon River.
   

  Lance Mackey and Handsome
  at the finish in Nome early this morning.
  Photo by Al Grillo of The Associated Press

  

  “I just beat the best musher in the world,” the 37-year-old throat cancer survivor from Fairbanks said after he crossed the finish line under Nome’s burled arch early Wednesday morning.

  King, who last won in 2006, ran most of the race with a full team of 16 dogs that continued to look remarkably fresh and alert as the race progressed. But Mackey struggled with ailing dogs sapped by unseasonably warm weather that marked much of the 1,100-mile trail. Yet there he was, paving the trail while King shrewdly coasted behind him from checkpoint to checkpoint.

  Mackey, 37, decided to get creative.

  He arrived in Elim three minutes ahead of his 51-year-old rival. He pumped himself with coffee, but made a show of settling in for a nap, telling checkpoint volunteers to wake him in an hour. King also settled in and soon was snoring.

  That was Mackey’s signal to get going. He snuck out of the checkpoint 70 minutes before his opponent.

  King was angry when he woke up to Mackey’s “nefarious cunning.”

  “He baited me to sleep, was waiting until I closed my eyes, knowing it wouldn’t be long and I didn’t open them until after he got out the door,” the Denali Park musher said in White Mountain, where he finally dropped two dogs before heading up the icy Bering Sea coast for the 77-mile homestretch.

  “I really didn’t think it was going to work,” Mackey said moments after crossing the finish line with 11 dogs at 2:46 a.m. ADT Wednesday.

  A gleeful Mackey 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 hand. They chanted “Mackey, Mackey, Mackey” repeatedly.

  “I’m not much to brag very often, but damn, I’m going to this time,” said Mackey, 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.”

  Wednesday’s victory 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 in the same year. 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 ran the 2007 Iditarod and the Quest this year and last.

  For much of this year’s Iditarod, he not only tussled for the lead with King. Mackey also struggled with dogs stricken with diarrhea and slowed by higher temperatures than they were used to.

  But his team was in noticeably better health in White Mountain, where mushers are required to take an eight-hour break.

  “They’re the best dogs, hands-down,” Mackey said in Nome Wednesday.

  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.

  “It took a little effort to get to the finish line,” said Mackey, who completed the trek across some of Alaska’s harshest terrain in just under nine and a half days.

  When King crossed the finish line at 4:05 a.m. Wednesday to take second place, a grinning Mackey was there to shake his hand.

  “It was tough competition, but an easy race,” King said at the burled arch.

  newsminer.com

  I was asleep before Jeff King pulled into Nome in second place, almost an hour and a half after Mackey.  Later his morning, the hotly contested run for third place was settled before I got back online.  As of 11:53 the lineup is:
  3.  Ramey Smyth
  4.  Ken Anderson
  5.  Martin Buser
  6.  Hans Gatt

  7.  Mitch Seavey

  The race is not over yet.  It will end when the Red Lantern passes under the burled arch.  Deborah Bicknell entered Kaltag one minute after Liz Parrish this morning.  Maybe they are just keeping each other company back there.  They’ve been hanging together for miles and miles.

  Meanwhile rookie William Kleedehn is in 27th position in White Mountain, with only 77 miles to go after he completes his mandatory rest about 6 PM today.  He has a substantial lead on Melissa Owens, who left Elim at 7:08 this morning in 29th position.

  Rookie Rohn Buser is between Koyuk and Elim in 35th position, down to seven dogs.  His dad, Martin, below, embarrassed himself and appears to have lost some face over a prank with his GPS tracker, but at least he didn’t suffer the humiliation of being beaten by his son.  Not this year, anyway.

  
  photo by Bob Hallinen, Anchorage Daily News

  • 4:19 pm
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