Musher Lance Mackey has won the Iditarod, his second consecutive victory in “the last great race on earth”:
Sled-dog racing pundits said it couldn’t be done.
Win the brutal 1,000-mile Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race and the punishing 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race both in one year, both — in fact — in the space of little more than a month?
Impossible.
And then a hardscrabble, cancer-beating musher from Fairbanks by the name of Lance Mackey did it.
But that was last year.
What could Mackey possibly do to top it this year?
How about an instant replay?
It takes a lot of things to win an Iditarod. Your own athleticism and that of your dogs; training; tenacity. This year it also took a little gamesmanship:
WHITE MOUNTAIN — If Lance Mackey pulls off a victory, it may have been a little of that old Mackey magic — a recipe that includes a dash of mind games and a lot of old-fashioned hard work — that made the difference.
First, the head game: Mackey lulled his rival, Jeff King, into parking his team at Elim. He then tip-toed out of the checkpoint at 2:20 a.m. after just an hour and 20 minutes rest, right as King shut his eyes for a nap. That was textbook Iditarod tricksterism. The move gained Mackey a one-hour advantage leaving that checkpoint. The hard work part came next, then the reigning Iditarod champion called up his team and ski-poled for the next six and a half hours to maintain that advantage all the way to White Mountain.
King woke up, realized he’d been left behind and got his team moving at 3:10 a.m., after a rest of about two hours. The four-time champion assumed he’d gain on Mackey, since he had on all the runs up to this one, but he found out that Mackey still had a little more gas in the tank. “There’s no end yet in how many times I think I know something that’s not true,†King said, shortly before taking a snooze at White Mountain.
He’s probably using steroids.
I finally found out who won this race – there is absolutely no coverage – live or otherwise down here in the “outside” or the lower 48. It’s a shame when there is so much interest in Alaska and Alaska Cruise trips that people can’t keep up daily with the race… why is that? No news coverage, no sports news coverage – and for this we pay big dollars every month to catch all the satellite channels and cable channels. Someone in the organization needs to do something about us not getting any news during the race at all. Thanks. MT
Actually, the coverage of the race this year has been the best ever but it wasn’t very visible except to those “in the know”. The official web page for the race had a feature, by subscription only, called “Iditarod Insider”. This year’s features for Insiders were so fabulous I’m planning writing a post on them—videos, blog, a fascinating real-time interactive map.
But it wasn’t advertised and news hasn’t been carried on regular cable or broadcast channels.