Mackey wins fourth straight Yukon Quest
FAIRBANKS - Lance Mackey on Wednesday won his fourth consecutive Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, beating back the challenge of his neighbor - and a rookie - to do it.
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The 37-year-old Fairbanks musher completed the 1,000-mile race, pulling into Whitehorse, Yukon, at 1:23 a.m. Second place finisher Ken Anderson was 15 minutes behind him.
"I think my head's on backwards. I've been lookin' over my shoulder for about a hundred miles," Mackey said as hundreds of fans cheered him at the finish line.
Mackey last year became the first person to win the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in the same year. This year's Iditarod begins March 1 with the ceremonial start in Anchorage and the official restart the next day in Willow.
The Yukon Quest started Feb. 9 in Fairbanks, and Mackey crossed the finish line 10 days, 12 hours and 14 minutes later.
And for Mackey, the victory came after a major blunder during the race. While running with his headlamp off, Mackey made a wrong turn on King Solomon's Dome, about 750 miles into the race, a mistake that cost him four hours to correct. Mackey said he made that time back by speeding up and cutting rest.
He left the last checkpoint, at Braeburn, at 1:53 p.m. Tuesday after the mandatory eight-hour layover. He had a 19-minute lead on Anderson.
Anderson - relying on splits from spectators along the route - was able to get the deficit down to four minutes along the final stretch, but faded at the end.
"I could sense you," Mackey told Anderson as he congratulated him. "I couldn't see you, but I knew you were there somewhere."
Mackey's wife, Tonya, and Anderson's wife, Gwen Holdmann, watched together in the finish chute.
"This is probably the best race I've ever had, coming in second to a team like Lance's. He's the team to beat right now, so yeah, it's exciting," Anderson, 35, said.
Mackey finished with 11 dogs, more than anyone in the24-musher field.
"They're all standouts," said Mackey, who pocketed $35,000 for the victory.
Dan Kaduce had the race's lead for the first days out of Fairbanks, but that quickly changed.
From Eagle, 400 miles into the Yukon Quest, it was a two-man race between Mackey, a throat cancer survivor, and Anderson, an Iditarod veteran who said he was inspired, in part, to enter the Quest after Mackey won both last year.
Previously, Hans Gatt had been the only three-time Yukon Quest winner, taking the 2002-04 titles. Mackey has won every Yukon Quest since.