Mackey wins 1,100-mile Iditarod

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 more than 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.

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.