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Mackey uses tricky move to win his second Iditarod

Defending champion Lance Mackey leaves the White Mountain, Alaska, checkpoint in the lead of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday. Mackey won in nine days, 11 hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds. PHOTO: AP

With a sneaky move near the end of the 1,770km route in Alaska, Lance Mackey burst past four-time champion Jeff King to win his second straight Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race yesterday.

It was a difficult race, beset with problems and the challenge of competing with King and his faster and better-rested dog team, Mackey said.

The crucial move, he told reporters, was quietly departing Elim, an Inupiat Eskimo village and race checkpoint 198km from the finish line in Nome, while King snoozed.

"I'm not much to brag very often but, damn, I'm going to do it this time. I worked for that one," Mackey, a commercial fisherman, said after reaching Nome in nine days, 11 hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds.

For his victory in the world's most famous sled-dog race, Mackey took home US$69,000 and a new truck, part of a total purse of about US$1 million. Live coverage of his finish was broadcast on statewide television.

Mackey said he drank two big cups of coffee in Elim, hung up his gear and pretended he was going to sleep until King dozed off.

"I lay there jittering, basically, for about 15 minutes until I heard him start snoring, then I slowly got out my stuff, snuck outside, strapped it on the top of my sled," he said. "I just took off walking down the road."

King woke up and tried to chase him but was about an hour behind by then -- a margin Mackey maintained to the end.

The two had been running within minutes of each other since about the race's midway point, although King's dogs were faster and were getting more rest at checkpoints, Mackey said.

"I had to do something a little different," he said. "The move in Elim was old-school, but it was so old-school that they forgot about it. And I needed to pull something out of the bag."

A record 96 mushers started the Iditarod on March 1 in Anchorage. When Mackey crossed the finish line, 81 were still on the trail.

The race, now in its 36th year, commemorates a 1925 mission that sent medicine to Nome by sled-dog relay to combat a fatal diphtheria outbreak.

Two members of a media production crew working with organizers of the race were injured on Tuesday when their small plane crashed en route to a race checkpoint.

Alaska state police said that Tony Verano and Matt Peterson sustained injuries that were not life threatening when the Cessna 180 went down about 20km east of White Mountain, Alaska, 125km from the Nome finish line. The pilot, Kenneth Moon, was not hurt. No other people were on board.

Verano and Peterson work for Versus cable sports television channel, formerly known as the Outdoor Life Network, said Stan Hooley, executive director of the Iditarod Trail Committee. Versus is a national media partner with the Iditarod.

Moon was flying from the checkpoint at Koyuk to White Mountain when the plane crashed, police Sergeant Andrew Merrill said.
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