Alaska lost a legend Wednesday with the passing of Lance Mackey.
Known as the Comeback Kid, Mackey beat cancer and overcame odds and adversity throughout his life to have one of the most decorated careers in sled dog racing history.
Through many ups and downs, Mackey was widely admired for his scrappy spirit, his cunning race tactics, his genuine nature and his love for his dogs.
Mackey succumbed to a second bout of lung cancer. He was 52.
He was a dominant figure in distance mushing for much of the early 2000s. His achievements in racing while battling lung cancer that began in 2001 garnered him international fame. In 2008, Mackey was honored with the ESPY Award for “Best Outdoor Athlete.”
Lance Mackey hugs his lead dogs Larry and Lippy at the finish line after winning the 2007 Iditarod. Photo by Jeff Schultz/Alaska Stock Images
Mackey is the only musher to win the crown jewels of distance mushing, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, four times each in consecutive fashion. He won both thousand-mile races back-to-back in 2007 and 2008, a feat previously considerable impossible by many.
“It’s a sad day,” five-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey said by phone Thursday. “The dude lived. He was fearless. He packed more into his life than most.”
Mackey had his demons and his struggles with substance abuse are well documented.
“He had flaws but he was okay with the idea that he was not perfect,” Seavey said. “It’s a valuable trait to have.”
Still one of my favorite memes, and particularly relevant tonight. He is going to be so missed by so many people all around the world 💔💔💔 pic.twitter.com/uzSgeHEw8Q
— Meredith Mapes (@alaskandoggirl) September 8, 2022
Four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King was one of Mackey’s greatest rivals during his peak racing years. They were also friends.
“I got a little choked up when I got the news,” King said by phone. “We’re gonna miss him.”
Mackey and King’s epic duels included the 2008 Iditarod, when the two played a game of cat and mouse over the last 300 miles of the race. Their checkpoint charades were well chronicled by fans following the race from around the world.
Mackey approaches the finish line en route to his third straight Iditarod title in 2009. Photo courtesy of Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.
“I used his boots as a pillow,” said King, describing how he kept Mackey from leaving checkpoints unnoticed. “But then he tricked me into closing my eyes in Elim and snuck out on me.”
King woke up and tried to chase him down but couldn’t close the gap, finishing about an hour and 20 minutes behind.
“I lay there jittering, basically, for about 15 minutes until I heard him start snoring,” Mackey told Reuters News in 2008. “Then I slowly got out my stuff, snuck outside, strapped it on the top of my sled.”
Mackey’s trickery sealed his second victory in the Last Great Race. His battle with King that year also sealed a friendship that would last until Mackey’s death.
“I considered him a friend. We had a couple heart to hearts along the trail that year,” King said. “We knew one of us was going to win. We had wonderful conversations about life and our love for our dogs. He was always a nice guy.”
A few years ago Mackey gave King an autographed copy of his autobiography, The Lance Mackey Story. He signed the book to King, writing “You snooze, you lose.”
Said King: “It’s one of my most cherished possessions.”
Seavey was just out of high school and setting out on his professional mushing career at the height of Mackey’s dominance.
“When I started racing, he was the top dog,” Seavey said. “There is a lot I took from Lance. He wasn’t afraid to fail. He put it all on the line. That’s commendable.”
Lance Mackey was inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.
2007 Iditarod champion Lance Mackey and his lead dog Larry pose at the Nome awards banquet. Photo by Jeff Schults/Alaska Stock Images
The following is an excerpt from his Alaska Sports Hall of Fame inductee biography written by Beth Bragg and Bob Eley in 2010:
“An iron-man musher with a kennel of wonder dogs, Lance Mackey dominated long distance sled-dog racing for a stretch of time like nobody in the history of the sport.
A lung cancer survivor who started his career in Kasilof on the Kenai Peninsula and later moved north of Fairbanks, Mackey in 2007 accomplished what most people thought was impossible when he won both the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Just to show it wasn’t a fluke, he went out and accomplished the same feat in 2008. In 2009, he skipped the Quest – giving someone else a chance to win the race he owned for four straight years — but won his third consecutive Iditarod. In 2010 he won an unprecedented fourth straight Iditarod.
In the year of Mackey’s first double victory, eight dogs ran both races — an incredible 2,000 miles in less than 40 days. At the Iditarod finish line in Nome, their tails wagged as their master basked in the spotlight. The dogs came from Mackey’s aptly named Come Back Kennel. Just as Mackey defied conventional wisdom that said a musher couldn’t win the Iditarod and the Quest in the same year, he defied medical experts who suspected cancer would end his career. . . “
Read his full inductee bio and visit his Inductee Page here.