Lance Mackey works harder than ever, motivates his dogs to victory

If a human being could win the Iditarod’s Golden Harness award for best lead dog, the honor this year would have been bestowed to Lance Mackey, hands down.

Mackey’s dog team was always at the front of the largest and most talented field in the history of the Iditarod, and he pulled out a nifty win, but the effort took every trick in his book to cajole, reassure and reprimand his usually smooth-running unit of rock solid veterans.

The race started off with bad vibes, not that the public knew it. Things began looking noticeably off key by Nikolai. Then reigning Iditarod champion got the pep back in his dogs at Takotna, but it wouldn’t last. They slowed back down by the Yukon River. If a single word could sum up the 2008 Iditarod for Mackey, that word would be “frustration.” He often complained he didn’t have leaders, and he was smoldering by Koyuk. Yet he took that negative energy — all the piled-up annoyances of the trail — and funneled the mess of emotions back into motivating his dogs for a last-minute push, spiced by a dash of trickery, that propelled him ahead of his main rival, Jeff King, to his second consecutive title.

Brilliant. Score another victory for one of the most gifted distance dog mushers I’ve ever seen. Period. It was impressive to witness.

While the race to win wound up between Mackey and King, and it was an incredible neck-and-neck duel from the halfway point on, there was certainly a lot more happening behind them. If the 2008 Iditarod frustrated the guy who won it, just imagine how it felt for those who thought they had a shot and found themselves foundering farther back in the top 20, or top 30, than they expected to be. The source of that frustration, or a major factor, was the usual adversary: Weather. The race started out hot and stayed that way for the next 10 days or so, until the first 20 teams or so had already finished. Though extremely well groomed, trails were soft, and snow was deeper than in recent memory. Runs that should take four hours would take six.

Hot for a dog team is anything above 15 Fahrenheit, and it was consistently above 30 and sometimes pushing the upper 30s for days on end. Somehow, the trail held up and creeks stayed frozen. There were no significant water issues. And while the conditions slowed down the dogs, it also seemed to preserve them. Teams this year stayed largely intact well past the halfway point of Cripple.

Jeff King, who nearly won, had a full string of 16 dogs all the way to White Mountain, finally dropping two as he hoped a burst of speed could reel in Mackey on the final run to Nome. Ken Anderson and Martin Buser, 4th and 5th place, had 13-dog strings at the finish. The race isn’t about who finishes with the most dogs — an eight-dog team can easily outperform a much larger group, just ask Ramey Smyth — but the high numbers in many teams indicates generally dog-friendly conditions this year.

The biggest complaint from mushers was that it was too warm, and dogs that usually wolf down meals were finicky. They would nibble, and they chose salmon or lean beef instead of pork fat, lamb fat or lard, which pack tons of calories per ounce.

The poster child for musher frustration was, unfortunately, Paul Gebhardt. Gebhardt has a very real shot at winning every year, but as he made a move to seize the lead by being first up the trail to Cripple, he was blind-sided by sopping wet conditions that slowed his team to a crawl. It took him 20 hours to get to Cripple from Takotna, which included a short campout along the way. He was beside himself with disappointment as he launched into his 24-hour layover, realizing his shot at a win was over. It wasn’t just Gebhardt feeling blue. Most of the mushers 24-ing at Cripple were in some kind of a funk over slow travel times.

Most got over it, with a little sleep. Once again, Gebhardt turned out to be a poster child, but this time, it was for resolve. He brushed himself off and resumed the race, and was a new man by Ruby. His dogs would power forward to an eighth-place finish.

Looking at the top 10 teams, it’s pretty much a who’s who of distance dog mushing, with a couple of the usual “surprise” performances that crop up every year. Dog teams just peak sometimes, and sometimes they don’t, as some of the great mushers who fell out of the top 20 could tell you.

• Mackey proved again that he has taken the art of distance sled dog racing to a new level. A couple of times he credited Team Norway’s Robert Sorlie for being a mentor, saying he studied interviews and video of Sorlie in action, and made him his model. Mushers need to study Mackey now, who has won six 1,000-mile races since 2005, including his back to back Iditarod victories. Everyone made a lot out of Mackey’s move to catch King napping at Elim, but the best team usually wins the Iditarod, and it was Mackey’s ability to convince his dogs to finally push hard that won the race.

• King is another genius of the sport, and was a charismatic lead-dog away from winning the race this year. King spent the last two years cross-training his dogs by swimming them in Goose Lake in the summer. He also used an oxygen chamber (a converted barn) for altitude conditioning. That, combined with aggressive long-distance training, provided King with a uniform team that started “slow” but maintained a loose, happy chemistry all the way. As Mackey was agonizing over dogs under-performing at Koyuk, King was the picture of contentment, gushing over his dogs’ energy. King could not quite pass Mackey, though, and eventually the two teams wound up running the same speed. King’s thoughtful care of his dogs earned him the humanitarian award.

• Ramey Smyth ran the race of his career, starting with a battered, spliced-up training sled and a 10.5-year-old lead dog named Babe. Starting on the conservative side as usual, Smyth began systematically picking off teams by the Yukon River. When I saw his team roll into Koyuk, keeping pace with Martin Buser despite skipping Shaktoolik, I thought he had a good shot at third place. His big dogs looked loose and ready for more. Before the race, Smyth had sung the praises of Babe, a dog that had lead him through multiple Iditarod finishes. I thought, maybe she’s a year too old for this. But she did it again, a steady influence next to one of Smyth’s powerful younger dogs as he seized third place. Smyth’s peers voted, and Babe won the Golden Harness this year.

• Ken Anderson made a statement without saying a word, by having a powerful team of speedy, houndy dogs that out-ran, barely, Martin Buser’s squad in a foot race for fourth place after 1,000 miles of racing. Anderson nearly beat Mackey in this year’s Yukon Quest, heightening speculation that not can a dog team handle twin 1,000-mile races with only a week and a half rest between them, but they can also benefit from it. This was Anderson’s highest finish yet; he was 5th in 2003. Buser shaved a few minutes off Anderson on the run over from White Mountain. For Buser, it was a different race this year. Starting at a more reserved pace, he not only got to travel for a while with his son, Rohn, an 18-year-old rookie, but he also felt the strategy might help him win. He watched Mackey come from behind last year, but Mackey and King got too far ahead this year for anyone to get close.

• Hans Gatt finally broke into the top 10 with a superb group of dogs, finishing 6th place, a big improvement over his previous best of 12th place a few years ago. His competitors marveled at the strength, speed and beauty of Gatt’s dog team. Most figured it was about time for the three-time Quest champion and stage racing expert to soar in the Iditarod. Gatt, also a renowned sled builder, trained all year with a tail-dragger (a seated sled), but started the race with a traditional model. Twice, he forgot what he was driving and sat back onto nothing, losing the team both times. Both times, though, the dogs stopped and waited for their master to jump up and jog up to them.

• Mitch Seavey, Gebhardt and Kjetil Backen wound up being the three amigos this year, by the time they reached the coast. They traveled together and took turns breaking trail. Seavey pushed forward to finish seventh, which is remarkable since he had concerns about his team back in Ruby. He’d considered taking a conservative approach up the Yukon but opted instead to trust in his smaller dog team, racing up river. The team, led by a young dog named Payton, didn’t let Seavey down. Gebhardt, who’s number one lead dog died last fall when it ate a rock (further proof that dogs are not like humans), proved his other lead dogs had plenty of toughness. And Backen showed discipline, taking his foot of the gas at Cripple when he was in the hunt to win. His team was the liveliest of the top 10, but he lacked strong leaders this year.

• Rounding out the top 10 was Sebastian Schnuelle, who surprised none of the other mushers but may have surprised some fans. He had a fantastic run, and is another musher who knows what he’s working with and isn’t afraid to make changes that best suit his particular dog team. Schnuelle had a lot of old-timers on his team, dogs that could run for hours tirelessly, but that refused to run fast. So that’s what he did. His team trotted for hours and eventually started gaining a little speed. Happy with a top 20 finish, Schnuelle managed to pass five or more teams on the coast, for 10th.

Among the top 20, Zack Steer only finished 11th by a few seconds, losing out to Schnuelle in a foot race along Front Street. He seemed almost relieved not to be in the top 5 this year. Steer was a surprise third place in 2007. Rick Swenson scared some of the front-runners when he came storming up the Yukon River and into Unalakleet. The five-time champion seemed on the verge of passing everyone up. Fans on the Yukon and up the coast were thrilled to see Swenson in the hunt again in 2008. Jessie Royer had yet another strong finish, proving she’s capable of putting together an Iditarod-winning team if all the pieces fall together. Many people may not know it, but Royer leads a double life: Musher by winter and cowboy by summer. The Montana native showed a video on a laptop after the race of her doing barrel riding while firing a black powder pistol at balloons in the off season. DeeDee Jonrowedidn’t make it into the very front of the pack in 2008 but she held to her guns and focus on her own race and finished with a strong team of dogs. That had been her mission all race, as it has for several years. Gerry Willomitzer surged to 16th place in only his second Iditarod. The Yukon Quest veteran made it clear that he’s interested in racing, not sightseeing. And Jim Lanier, the iron man of the Iditarod, had his second best finish, 20th. He was 18th in 2004. At 67, Lanier was as loose and active as anyone out there, and is perhaps the calmest, un-flustered guy in the sport. At Old Woman cabin, Buser complained to him about his standing in the race, to which Lanier merely said, “get over it” — advice Buser later said he took to heart.

There are many, many other mushers who had excellent races or are obviously will do so in the coming years. William Kleedehn claimed rookie of the year, almost without trying. The 11-year Quest veteran vowed not to make it a foot race for top rookie, but found himself in a position on the coast where the prize was right in front of him. Nome’s own Melissa Owens made a bid for the top rookie spot, fell short, but the 18-year-old learned valuable lessons this year. The best mushers are able to learn from others and from their mistakes. She has potential to be an incredible competitor. Another newcomer to watch is Sven Haltmann, one of Buser’s former handlers. He’s been building his own racing kennel and forcing himself to run conservatively. Keep an eye on Haltmann.

Other than some new faces on the trail this year, perhaps the biggest change in the Iditarod in 2008 was not one of new sled designs, like King in 2006, or strategies, like Sorlie in 2003. The big change this year was the media. There were at least three video crews up the trail, with cameras at checkpoints, in helicopters and on snowmobiles — they were everywhere. Some of the results have already been shown on the Versus network, and there are supposed to be two series on the Discovery Channel later in the year, in addition to the Iditarod’s own award-winning DVD. In addition, fans got hooked on the tracker — the two-pound units that combined GPS and satellite phone technology to pinpoint where a select 20 mushers were along the trail. It was a test run, but proved hugely popular. The Iditarod’s goal is to have every musher hooked into the tracker next year.

It’s anybody’s guess where all the intense competition, intense dog care and intense media coverage will lead. But one thing is for sure, the race is always evolving.