Lance Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday, becoming the first musher to win major long-distance North American sled dog races back-to-back.
Mackey crossed under the famed burled arch in downtown Nome early on Tuesday evening, completing the 1,770km Iditarod in nine days, five hours and eight minutes.
He celebrated as he came down Nome's Front Street, alternately waving a fist in the air, then high-fiving some of the estimated 1,000 fans who lined the street, braving subzero temperatures. His family mobbed him at the finish line.
"Dreams do come true, Mama, they do," Mackey said after the race, fighting back tears.
"This is my passion," he told reporters, 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."
"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," he said.
On Feb. 20, Mackey won his third consecutive Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, a 1,600km race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon.
With only 12 days rest, Mackey took 13 of his 16 dogs from the Yukon Quest to Willow for the March 4 official start of the Iditarod. In the two races, the dog team covered a distance equivalent to mushing from Boston to Salt Lake City.
Mackey, 36, joins his father, Dick, and brother, Rick, as Iditarod champions. Both won the race wearing bib No. 13 and each 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 in order to select the No. 13 bib.
This was also his sixth time in the race.
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