With final surge, Steer nails down 3rd place 1200515976739414
Hard-charging Zach Steer passed four-time champion Martin Buser just outside of Safety, the final checkpoint 22 miles from Nome, and cruised to the finish line before dawn Wednesday to finish third in the 35th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Steer, the 33-year-old owner of Sheep Mountain Lodge, crossed the finish line on Front Street at 3:46 a.m., completing a run of 9 days, 12 hours and 46 minutes. Buser finished 26 minutes later in fourth place.
Those 19 minutes were worth $7,000 to Steer, who will take home $57,000 for third place. Buser earns $50,000 for fourth.
Defending champion Jeff King of Denali Park finished fifth at 6:05 this morning. His time of 9 days, 15 hours and 5 minutes was just off his winning time of 9 days, 11 hours and 12 minutes last year.
Late Tuesday night, Paul Gebhardt arrived in Nome at 10:28 p.m. to finish second, two hours and 19 minutes behind champion Lance Mackey of Fairbanks, who made history by becoming the first musher to win both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race the same year.
A sled repair that Gebhardt had to make in Shaktoolik, 170 miles from Nome, may have cost him the race. The repair took more than three hours, and the 50-year-old could never close the gap on Mackey. Both he and Mackey had similar run times down the Bering Sea Coast after the pair surged ahead of the fading teams of early leaders Buser and King.
Steer is a new name in the Iditarod top 10. His previous best Iditarod finish was 14th in 2000. He began mushing in 1997 and has completed both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, where he finished second in 2004.
Mackey, meanwhile, was celebrating his accomplishment in Nome -- while admitting he may not try to win both races in the same year again.
"Yeah, I'd love to come back and repeat that performance, but I'm really realistic here. Once in a lifetime is probably a rare opportunity," he said while one of his dogs licked frost off his goatee.
He acknowledged that his dogs were a one-of-a-kind team -- and that next year they will be older.
"I owe it to them. I think I'm smart enough to know when enough is enough, to back off a little bit. They're in their prime, they proved that. So I think it's time for a little R&R," he said.
But Tuesday night, the down-to-earth musher planned a little whiskey for his own rest and relaxation and to celebrate the feat with his family. Both his father, Dick, and half brother, Rick, are past Iditarod champions.
"This is a damn dream that I've been living, you know, dreaming about since I was a little, little boy when my Dad won this race," said Lance Mackey, 36.
Gebhardt, 50, was third last year.
"He is a very driven dog driver," Gebhardt said of Mackey. "You got to admit, he's like the Dale Earnhardt of dog racing."
About a thousand fans braved subzero temperature to cheer Mackey to the finish. He lived the moment, slapping high-fives with fans as his dogs led him down the last block, sometimes jumping off the sled and running with them until his family mobbed him at the end.
"Dreams do come true, Mama, they do," Mackey said, fighting back tears.
"This is my passion," he said, 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 something we breathe, eat and sleep," he said of the Mackey family's love of mushing. "This is what we do."
On Feb. 20, Mackey won his third consecutive Yukon Quest, starting in Whitehorse, Yukon and finishing in Fairbanks.
With only 10 days rest, Mackey took most of his 16 dogs from the Yukon Quest to Willow for the start of the Iditarod. In the two races, the dog team covered a distance equivalent to mushing from Boston to Salt Lake City.
Mackey's father, Dick, and brother, Rick, both won the race wearing bib No. 13, and each did so in 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, enabling him to select the No. 13 bib.
"I didn't know exactly what this bib was going to do for me, but what an honor," said Mackey. "This is the most cherished piece of memorabilia I'll ever own."
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 starting another. But Mackey said he wasn't pushed much in the Yukon Quest, and it served as a good mental and physical training run for the dogs.
"I kept saying I want to be the one to prove that wrong. For those who don't believe it can be done, I thrive on underestimation. Don't ever doubt that I can't do something. I lived through cancer," he said.
Mackey was diagnosed with neck cancer in 2001 and underwent surgery and radiation. He had the cancerous tumor removed from his neck and is now considered cancer free.
Canadian Hans Gatt, 49, a three-time Quest winner who was also runner-up to Mackey twice in that race, said Mackey's team was the best-looking on the Iditarod trail this year. Instead of tiring, his team recovered faster than any of the others, and maintained their speed.
"I can't run my dogs like that," Gatt said Tuesday, almost 100 miles back on the trail. "He obviously has figured out something we have not figured out yet."
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 had 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.
Thrusting both arms high in the air, he yelled out an elongated, "Yeah! Oh, the truck!"
Gebhardt chases Mackey to Nome; four rest in White Mountain 1200515976671350
WHITE MOUNTAIN -- With Lance Mackey leading Paul Gebhardt on the final 77-mile stretch to Front Street, four other mushers have checked into the White Mountain checkpoint for a mandatory eight-hour rest before taking up the chase.
Those four will battle it out for third, fourth, fifth and sixth places. Less than two hours separate third - place Martin Buser from fifth-place Jeff King, with young Sheep Mountain musher Zach Steer sandwiched between them. Where they finish has a big bearing on how much they win. Third place pays $57,000; sixth pays $40,000. Ed Iten of Kotzebue is also in White Mountain.
Gebhardt was second in the 2000 Iditarod and finished third last year.
Mackey left White Mountain at 9:38 a.m. If he completes the last stretch in 10 hours, which is about the average of the past five years, he'll arrive in Nome at about 7:30 tonight.
But he won't be with Zorro. Mackey's always faithful dog was awaiting a plane ride home from this checkpoint as a tearful Mackey hit the trail for what is expected to be a historic finish to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race later today.
Just before leaving, an emotional Mackey wiped back tears as he comforted the 9-year-old male veterinarians think might have contracted pneumonia.
"Buddy, you'll be all right," he said. "I'll see you in a little while."
Zorro is the stud who helped the Fairbanks musher build a team that has won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race three years running and is now poised to win the 1,100 mile Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome.
Back-to-back victories in these two ultramarathons -- the Quest in late February, the Iditarod in early March -- is not simply unprecedented. Prior to Mackey's showing here, the feat was considered impossible.
Though cognizant of the fact he was on the brink of Alaska mushing history, Mackey was clearly troubled that Zorro wouldn't be joining him under the burled arch that marks the Iditarod finish line in Nome.
"I've had better mornings," he said as he prepared to leave Zorro at the checkpoint. "But it's a real great day nonetheless."
Sunny skies were smiling on him for the last 80-mile march over the Topkok Hills to the beaches outside of Nome and the final turn down fabled Front Street, near where thousands would gather to welcome a new Iditarod champion.
Mackey's mood brightened as he bootied dogs and prepared to hit the trail at about 9:30 a.m. His always ebullient father, he knew, was waiting at the finish line.
"I know he's ecstatic right now, a very proud man," Mackey said. "I'm looking forward to it. Two years ago, I was about to crack the top 10 and my dad said he wasn't going to meet me in Nome unless I won this race. So to see my dad out in Safety, the way he was (that year) - arms straight in the air, a big bucket of tears - I had to stop and get myself together.
"That showed exactly what he thought of my accomplishment. He changed his plans and made a special trip to see me come in the top 10. So now here I am, I'm going to win this damn thing. I can only imagine what he's thinking.
"I guarantee nobody thought this was going to be possible, sixth try, No. 13. What's the odds? You know, huge! Huge! But I was ready, damned and determined when I picked that number. That bib to me now is absolutely priceless. Absolutely priceless. It'll be a piece of memorabilia that I'll cherish the rest of my life."
Mackey also revealed for the first time that the dogs that did so much for him in the Quest and the Iditarod weren't really the dogs with which he originally planned to run two races.
"I originally planned to take a young team to the Quest, then all my veterans here (to the Iditarod)," he said. "(But) I had to rethink all that when they raised the purse in the Quest. I was going to defend my title and with a team that didn't have too much experience."
The younger dogs had done well in some 200-mile races, but Mackey wasn't sure of what they'd do in the longer events. So, he started playing with various combinations of dog teams.
"I had to re-evaluate my options," he said. "I broke my veterans down into half, (but) when it was all said and done, I didn't feel that the 2-year-old team lived up to its expectations. And to just run the Quest wasn't in my train of thought. I had to go defend my title."
So he started the Quest with almost all his veteran dogs.
"In reality, I thought it'd be easier to go there and do well as opposed to going here (in Iditarod)," he said. "Getting a top 10 here in this race is a major accomplishment. So I thought I had a pretty good shot at getting top three over there, and if everything goes well here, a top 10."
He ended up doing a lot better than he expected, and by the end it was with the same dogs that had helped him to victory in the Quest. They were mainly old veterans, with a couple of youngsters in the mix.
"One of them being Rev," Mackey said. "He made it to White Mountain this year. I think what I have is a superstar leader for next year."
When Mackey left White Mountain behind nine dogs for the final push to Nome, Rev sat on the bench. His health was fine, but he was tired. The musher judged Rev's old teammates better prepared for the last leg of the race and recognized the old mushing adage that a team can only go as fast as the slowest dog.
The nine Mackey had in harness looked good to go coming off a mandatory, eight hour rest.
They left the checkpoint with almost a three-hour head start on Gebhardt, Mackey's old neighbor from Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula.
Behind Gebhardt in White Mountain were four-time champs Martin Buser from Big Lake, 49, and Jeff King from Denali Park, 51, who are trying to hold off hard-charging 33-year-old musher Zack Steer from Sheep Mountain.
The 36-year-old Mackey talked about the Iditarod old guard as he munched on a bowl of hamburger and stirfry at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning at the checkpoint here.
"You know, I was kind of thinking on the way here, I'm tired of the Jeff and Martin Show," he said. "It's time for a new face, even if it's an ugly one."
Mackey is a cancer survivor who was left with nerve damage in his hand after having a lymphoma removed from his neck. It left him unable to manipulate the trigger finger on one hand. Because the finger got in the way of changing dog booties, Mackey eventually had a doctor remove it, and now he has only three fingers on that hand.
Mackey is likely to arrive in Nome sometime around 7:30 tonight to win his first Idiatrod, pick up the first-place money of $69,000 and collect a much needed new truck. The ones he owns now often don't run.
The 2007 Dodge Ram Laramie that goes to the Iditarod winner along with the prize money was thus looking awfully good to the musher.
"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."
Contact reporter Kevin Klott at kklott@adn.com or (907) 227-5143.
After dropping stud dog, Mackey heads for Nome 1200515976607884
WHITE MOUNTAIN -- Always faithful Zorro was awaiting a plane ride home from this checkpoint as a tearful Lance Mackey hit the trail toward Nome and what is expected to be a historic finish to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race later today.
Just before leaving, a highly emotional Mackey wiped back tears as he comforted the 9-year-old male veterinarians think might have contracted pneumonia.
"Buddy, you'll be all right,'' he said. "I'll see you in a little while.''
Zorro is the stud who helped the Fairbanks musher build a team that has won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race three years running and is now poised to win the 1,100 mile Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome.
Back-to-back victories in these two ultramarathons – the Quest in late February and the Iditarod in early March – is not simply unprecedented. Prior to Mackey's showing here, the feat was considered impossible.
Though cognizant of the fact he was on the brink of Alaska mushing history, Mackey was clearly troubled that Zorro wouldn't be joining him under the burled arch that marks the Iditarod finish line in Nome.
"I've had better mornings,'' he said as he prepared to leave Zorro at the checkpoint. "But it's a real great day nonetheless.''
Sunny skies were smiling on him for the 80 mile march over the Topkok Hills to the beaches outside of Nome and the final turn down fabled Front Street, near where thousands would gather to welcome a new Iditarod champion.
Mackey's mood brightened as he bootied dogs and prepared to hit the trail at about 9:30 a.m. His always ebullient father, he knew, was waiting at the finish line.
"I know he’s ecstatic right now, a very proud man,'' Mackey said. "I’m looking forward to it. Two years ago, I was about to crack the top 10 and my dad said he wasn’t going to meet me in Nome unless I won this race. So to see my dad out in Safety, the way he was (that year) – arms straight in the air, a big bucket of tears – I had to stop and get myself together.
"That showed exactly what he thought of my accomplishment. He changed his plans and made a special trip to see me come in the top 10. So now here I am, I’m going to win this damn thing. I can only imagine what he’s thinking.
Mackey also revealed for the first time that the dogs that did so much for him in the Quest and the Iditarod weren't really the dogs with which he originally planned to run two races.
"I originally planned to take a young team to the Quest, then all my veterans here (to the Iditarod),'' he said. "(But) I had to rethink all that when they raised the purse in the Quest. I was going to defend my title and with a team that didn’t have too much experience."
The younger dogs had done well in some 200-mile races, but Mackey wasn't sure of what they'd do in the longer events. So, he started playing with various combinations of dog teams.
"I had to re-evaluate my options,'' he said. "I broke my veterans down into half, (but) when it was all said and done, I didn't feel that the 2-year-old team lived up to its expectations. And to just run the Quest wasn't in my train of thought. I had to go defend my title.''
So he started the Quest with almost all his veteran dogs.
"In reality, I thought it’d be easier to go there and do well as opposed to going here (in Iditarod),'' he said. "Getting a top 10 here in this race is a major accomplishment. So I thought I had a pretty good shot at getting top three over there, and if everything goes well here, a top 10."
He ended up doing a lot better than he expected, and by the end it was with the same dogs that had helped him to victory in the Quest. They were mainly old veterans, with a couple of youngsters in the mix.
"One of them being Rev,'' Mackey said. "He made it to White Mountain this year. I think what I have is a superstar leader for next year."
When Mackey left White Mountain behind nine dogs for the final push to Nome, Rev sat on the bench. His health was fine, but he was tired. The musher judged Rev's old teammates better prepared for the last leg of the race and recognized the old mushing adage that a team can only go as fast as the slowest dog.
The nine Mackey had in harness looked good to go coming off a mandatory, eight-hour rest.
They left the checkpoint with almost a three-hour head start on Paul Gebhardt, Mackey's old neighbor from Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula.
Gebhardt didn't expect to have any chance of catching Mackey unless some sort of disaster struck.
Behind Gebhardt in White Mountain were four-time champs Martin Buser from Big Lake, 49, and Jeff King from Denali Park, 51, who are trying to hold off hard-charging 33-year-old musher Zack Steer from Sheep Mountain.
The 36-year-old Mackey talked about the Iditarod old guard as he munched on a bowl of hamburger and stir fry at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning at the checkpoint here.
"You know, I was kind of thinking on the way here, I'm tired of the Jeff and Martin Show,'' he said. "It's time for a new face, even if it's an ugly one.''
Mackey is a cancer survivor who was left with nerve damage in his hand after having a lymphoma removed from his neck. It left him unable to manipulate the trigger finger on one hand. Because the finger got in the way of changing dog booties, Mackey eventually had a doctor remove it, and now he has only three fingers on that hand.
Mackey will likely arrive in Nome sometime around 7:30 tonight to win his first Idiatrod, pick up the first-place money of $69,000 and collect a much needed new truck. The ones he owns now often don't run.
The 2007 Dodge Ram Laramie that goes to the Iditarod winner along with the prize money was thus looking awfully good to the musher.
“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.”
Contact reporter Kevin Klott at kklott@adn.com or (907) 257-4335.
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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