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A dogsled story to get mushy about |
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Written by asap
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Thursday, 15 March 2007 |
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One day after Lance Mackey won the 2007 Iditarod, the musher was still talking like a man who had stumbled upon a winning lottery ticket. Considering the way the circumstances were aligned, perhaps he shouldn’t have been so surprised.
Mackey’s father had won the Iditarod in 1978, on his sixth try, wearing bib number 13; his brother won in 1983, on his sixth try, wearing bib number 13. Sure enough, Mackey, wearing bib number 13 on his own sixth attempt, cruised across the finish line Tuesday night, firmly in first place.
“I’m not superstitious at all, but I might be now, a little bit,” Mackey told asap as he sat down to his first warm breakfast in more than a week. “Who would have really dreamt that (this) was going to happen? The odds were so against me.”
Mackey blazed out into the front of the pack early in the 2007 Iditarod, reaching the halfway point well ahead of the field. He relinquished his lead briefly to past champions Martin Buser and Jeff King, only to surge back into first for the remainder of the race.
Larry and Lippy, Mackey’s lead dogs, pulled him through the finish chute in Nome after nine days, five hours, and eight minutes on the trail, one of the fastest times in Iditarod history. Mackey also became the first musher to win the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod in the same year.
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Andrew Tolve is a freelancer based in San Francisco. | Only registered users can write comments.
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