Hello All!

Lance Mackey won the Iditarod today and thereby became the first person to
win the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod in the same year:

"Mackey wins 1,100-mile Iditarod

By MARY PEMBERTON

Associated Press Writer

NOME, Alaska - Lance Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on
Tuesday, becoming the first musher to win major long-distance North
American sled dog races back-to-back.

Mackey crossed under the famed burled arch in downtown Nome early Tuesday
evening, completing the 1,100-mile Iditarod in just over nine days.

He celebrated as he came down Nome's Front Street, alternately waving a
fist in the air, then high-fiving fans that lined the street. His family
mobbed him at the finish line.

'Dreams do come true, Mama, they do' Mackey said after the race, fighting
back  tears.

'This is my passion,' he told reporters, adding he was proud to follow in
his father's footsteps and joked about being thankful his father was a
musher and not a lawyer.

'It's our lifestyle, it's what we breathe, eat and sleep,' he said of the
Mackey family's love of mushing. "It's what we do."

On Feb. 20, Mackey won his third consecutive Yukon Quest International Sled
Dog Race, a 1,000 mile race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon.

With only 12 days rest, Mackey took 13 of his 16 dogs from the Yukon Quest
to Willow for the March 4 official start of the Iditarod. In the two races,
the dog team covered a distance equivalent to mushing from Boston to Salt
Lake City.

Mackey, 36, joins his father, Dick, and brother, Rick, as Iditarod
champions. Both won the race wearing bib No. 13 and each the sixth time
they ran the Iditarod. Lance Mackey camped out for days at the Iditarod
headquarters last June to be the first person to sign up for this year's
race in order to select the No. 13 bib.

This was also his sixth time in the race.

Many mushers have long believed it would not be possible to win both races
in the same year with the same dogs because the animals would need more
time to recover from one grueling race before launching off on another.

Mackey's win proves that is not so.

Canadian Hans Gatt, 49, a three-time Quest winner who was also runner-up to
Mackey twice, said Mackey's team was the best-looking team on the Iditarod
trail this year. Instead of tiring, his team recovered faster than any of
the others after long runs between checkpoints and maintained their speed.

'I can't run my dogs like that,' Gatt, of Whitehorse, said Tuesday, almost
100 miles back on the trail. 'He obviously has figured out something we
have not figured out yet.'

Mackey was the first musher early Tuesday morning to the White Mountain
checkpoint, about 80 miles from the finish line and where mushers must take
a mandatory eight-hour rest. He built a two-and-a-half hour lead over the
second musher into White Mountain, Paul Gebhardt, 50, of Kasilof.

Sled dog racing is a sport where mushers perform more for glory than
big-time payouts, having to rely heavily on sponsorships to continue
feeding their dogs.

For winning the world's longest sled-dog race, Mackey will pocket $69,000
and be handed the keys to a $41,000 pickup.

Mackey has been thinking about that truck along the trail and for good
reason. One year, when he was trying to get to the start of the Quest, he
was fined $500 for missing a meeting for mushers. The reason he was late
was that the two trucks he was driving broke down. One lost an engine and
the transmission went out in the other.

Just before this year's race, he splurged on a used, 14-year-old pickup.

Mackey, who has named his kennel Lance Mackey's Comeback Kennel, was
diagnosed with neck cancer in 2001 and underwent surgery and radiation.

With a feeding tube into his stomach and still undergoing cancer treatment,
Mackey started the 2002 Iditarod but was forced to scratch in Ophir more
than 400 miles from Anchorage. Mackey now is cancer-free. Mackey's father,
Dick Mackey, is considered one of the founders of the race, which began in
1973. Dick Mackey won in 1978. His brother, Rick, became champion in 1983.

This year's Iditarod has been marked by poor trail conditions, causing an
inordinate numbers of mushers - 21 - to scratch. One musher also took a
wrong trail, prompting a search, and one dog died during the race."

An interesting feat, a Quest record and an Iditarod win within a month.

Take care,

Steven Horn (steven.horn{at}northwestel.net)
Moderator, ALASKA_CHAT 
--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+