San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
4-time Iditarod champion embodied spirit of race
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Lance Mackey, one of mushing’s most colorful and accomplished champions who also suffered from health and drug problems, has died.
The four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race winner died Wednesday from cancer, his father and kennel announced on Facebook. He was 52.
Officials with the world’s most famous sled dog race said Iditarod Nation was in mourning.
“Lance embodied the spirit of the race, the tenacity of an Alaskan musher, displayed the ultimate show of perseverance and was loved by his fans,” officials said in a statement.
The son of 1978 Iditarod champion Dick Mackey and brother of 1983 champion Rick Mackey, Lance Mackey overcame throat cancer in 2001 to win an unprecedented four straight Iditarod championships, from 2007 through 2010.
It wasn’t just the 1,000-mile race across Alaska where he excelled. During his Iditarod run, twice he also won the 1,000mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race between Canada and Alaska with only two weeks rest between races.
But after the string of wins, he was beset by personal problems, health scares and drug issues that kept him from again reaching the top of the sport.
The treatment for his throat cancer cost him his saliva glands and ultimately disintegrated his teeth.
He was then diagnosed with Raynaud’s syndrome, which limits circulation to the hands and feet and is exacerbated by the cold weather that every musher must contend with in the wilds of Alaska.
In the 2015 race, he couldn’t manipulate his fingers to do simple tasks, like putting booties on his dogs’ paws to protect them from the snow, ice and cold. His brother and fellow competitor Jason Mackey agreed to stay with him at the back of the pack to help him care for the dogs.
It was a life-changing blow for Lance Mackey, who knew no other lifestyle.
“I love this sport,” he told an Iditarod TV crew during that race while choking back tears. “I can’t do it no more.”
Musher Lance Mackey with his lead dogs Maple (left) and Larry after winning the 2009 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Whether he won or lost, or when talking about problems, Mackey was always transparent.
“That honesty is what allowed him to be fearless,” five-time champion Dallas Seavey told the Associated Press on Thursday. “He didn’t have to see himself in a different light than he actually was.”
Seavey said Mackey gave it everything, racing to the limit.
“If it didn’t work, it didn’t work, and that was fine by him,” Seavey said. “It made him a heck of a competitor.”
After his string of first place finishes, Mackey dropped back in the standings, finishing a career-worst 43rd in 2015. The next year he scratched and didn’t race the Iditarod again until 2019, when he placed 26th.
In the 2020 race, his last, he carried his mother’s ashes in his sled to the finish line in Nome to honor her, but he was later disqualified after testing positive for methamphetamine. He entered rehab on the East Coast.
Months after the 2020 race finished, his partner Jenne Smith died in an all-terrain vehicle accident. They had two children.
Last month, he told the Iditarod website that an examination after a car accident discovered more cancer, and he thought treatment had taken care of it. “But came up with some other issues that aren’t gone and seem to have moved rapidly and left me in the position I’m in at the moment,” he said, noting he was on oxygen and had lost 30 pounds.
When asked if he was fearful, Mackey responded: “I’m not fearing nothing. You know, it is what it is, but I’m not any different than the rest of the people on the planet. When it’s my bus stop, I’ll get off.”