DAY 11

Mackey makes history with Iditarod win

By KEVIN KLOTT
Anchorage Daily News

Published: March 13, 2007
Last Modified: March 14, 2007 at 06:38 PM

NOME - Lance Mackey lit up this historic old gold-mining town along the Bering Sea on Tuesday as he feasted on the thrill of an Iditarod victory.

Punching his fists into the sky, pounding the lucky No. 13 bib on his chest, waving to a big Front Street crowd and always smiling, the Fairbanks musher bounded down Front Street behind his smartly trotting team to claim his first victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

His exuberance was so unbounded it was hard to believe he’d been on the 1,100-mile trail for 9 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes and 41 seconds from Anchorage, or that he’d barely grabbed a few hours sleep over the course of the two previous days as the world’s greatest sled dog race moved up the Bering Sea coast.

“Unreal,’’ he said as he bounced around the finishing chute like a puppy. “Unreal.’’

Later, after reporters managed to pull him away from the dogs, family, friends and well-wishers, the 36-year-old son of 1978 Iditarod champ Dick Mackey talked about seeing a lifelong dream fulfilled.

“This is a dream I’ve been dreaming about since I was a little boy,’’ he said.

It is now a dream come true.

The No. 13 bib Mackey wore was the same number both his father and half-brother Rick had worn to victory before him. Each of them won the Iditarod on their sixth try. This was Lance’s sixth try, and his fifth finish. He scratched from one Iditarod.

But this time the planets aligned, and in ways no one had thought possible.

In an Iditarod marked by furious winds and horrible trail conditions, Mackey did far more than simply join two family members in the winner’s circle, beating Kasilof’s Paul Gebhardt to the finish by 2 hours, 19 minutes.

This Iditarod win is something special because Mackey is the first to win both the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the Iditarod back to back, largely with the same dogs.

No one thought it could be done.

No one that is, but Lance Mackey, the musher in the dirty red snowsuit who hugged his wife, Tonya, at the finish line, then raced to embrace his lead dogs, who licked and slobbered all over his badly windburned face.

That was the only visible sign of the beating he had taken on the trail, but hidden beneath his right glove was a frostbitten middle finger coated with canine foot salve, covered in toilet paper and wrapped with duct tape to blunt the pain.

Mackey’s only disappointment at the finish was that his dad, who now lives in Arizona, wasn’t there. His flight from Arizona didn’t arrive until about 20 minutes after his son’s dog team trotted down Front Street. Instead of a finish-line hug from Dick, Lance got a phone call from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“You’re kidding me’’ was the musher’s first reaction to hearing that the governor was on the phone.

“You’re now this huge Alaskan ­hero,’’ Palin told him.

“Sixth try? No. 13? What are the odds?’’ Mackey had wondered back at the White Mountain checkpoint before marching off to victory.

Want longer odds?

Mackey had a cancerous tumor removed from his neck two years ago. That left him with nerve damage in his left index finger and pain so unbearable he wanted the finger removed.

“It was a big throbbing pain,” he said.

The finger was surgically removed. Three hours after leaving the hospital, Mackey was running his dogs.

The odds of winning the 1,100-mile Iditarod and the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest back-to-back were astronomical, too.

At one time, competing in both marathons was thought to be impossible. But winning both the same year?

“I guarantee nobody thought this was going to be possible,” he said.

Mackey had no doubt.

“Not even a question,” he said.

“There’s no way that if I would have raced them hard (at the Quest) and came here to race them hard, I would still have a team.

“But I didn’t have to (run hard) in the Quest. It was a long training run from Dawson (to Fairbanks).”

Eight of the nine dogs Mackey finished with, he said, were Quest dogs.

Twice before, Mackey tried winning both in the same year and came up short. He won Quests in 2005 and 2006, but finished seventh and 10th in those Iditarods.

But last month, he won his third straight Quest in record-setting time. Eleven days later, with nearly the same team, he started the Iditarod in Anchorage.

HEADING NORTH

Everything started coming together for Mackey last May when his family lived in Kasilof.

Ten weeks before Iditarod sign-ups began - the first mushers in line have dibs on bib numbers - Mackey sold his Kasilof home and purchased another in Fairbanks. Between the moves, Mackey and his family had no place to live; he’d sold his Kasilof home to younger brother, Jason, who’d moved in.

So wife Tonya, Lance and their four teenage kids settled into their camper in the driveway of their old Kasilof home. But Lance said that Jason spent more time in the camper than in the home. It got annoying.

“The hell with it,” Lance said, and he drove north to Wasilla. He and Tonya remembered the Iditarod sign-ups were June 24.

So the Mackeys pulled into Iditarod Headquarters on June 17, seven days early but first in line. The next day, G.B. Jones of Knik waited in line with his camper.

“I felt like a teenager again,” he said, “playing around the parking lot with my kids.”

On June 24, Iditarod Headquarters opened its doors. Mackey signed up, then bolted to Fairbanks. And on March 1, at the Iditarod pre-race banquet in Anchorage, Mackey picked bib No. 13.

His dad won with it; his brother won with it. Maybe it was his lucky No. 13, too.

His team needed some luck Saturday night when Mackey brought up the rear in a four-team dash to the Bering Sea coast, led by four-time champions Jeff King of Denali Park and Martin Buser of Big Lake. But Mackey and Gebhardt - old Kasilof neighbors who used to swap dogs - fed off each other’s momentum, working to catch up. Gebhardt crossed the finish line at 10:28 p.m. after 9 days, 7 hours, 28 minutes on the trail.

The teams bored through 25 mph headwinds, eventually making up a six-hour deficit.

The key for Mackey the rest of the way was resting less but feeding more.

“There was no reason to stop except to snack, and they ate everything,” he said of his team. “I’d start at the back, work to the front, get back to the sled and everything would be gone. It’s about a 30-second stop.”

He kept going, even in Rainy Pass when he was down to just one sled runner. Despite that, he maneuvered the sled through the treacherous Dalzell Gorge and across the snowless Farewell Burn until he could get a replacement runner in McGrath.

“Unbelievable,” Mackey said. “Buser was in front with two good runners and he was falling over. But every time I laughed at him, I would fall.”

TIME FOR A NEW FACE

As a 7-year-old, Mackey began dreaming of winning the Iditarod after he watched his dad win by one second.

“That was the most important second of his life,” Mackey said. “I never thought I’d actually be living it, too.”

But it’s exactly what he pictured.

“Just like (Robert) Sorlie, Martin (Buser) and Jeff (King), they all dream about perfection,” Mackey said. “That’s exactly what this trip’s been for me - perfect.”

Not since Mitch Seavey won in 2004 has a new champion passed the Burled Arch on Front Street. Mackey likes that picture.

“You know, I was kind of thinking … I’m tired of the Jeff (King) and Martin (Buser) Show,” Mackey said. “It’s time for a new face - even if it’s an ugly one.”

And with his victory, Mackey gets to replace his battered, unreliable truck that is prone to expensive breakdowns. In addition to his $69,000 first-place prize, Mackey will receive a 2007 Dodge Ram Laramie. The truck, valued at $40,980, will look pretty, he said, beside the four ugly diesels parked in his driveway.

“Somebody said I could go pick the color of my truck,” he said. “I’d like to have a one-of-a-kind (truck). I’m gonna have it painted up. People are gonna know what that truck means to me.”

And people will know how important it was to pick No. 13.

“I was ready, damned and determined when I picked that number,” Mackey said. “That bib to me now is absolutely priceless. It’ll be a piece of memorabilia that I’ll cherish the rest of my life.”

Daily News reporter Kevin Klott can be reached at kklott@adn.com or 257-4335.

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