How many times did Lance Mackey win the Iditarod race?
Son and brother of winners of famed Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race, Lance Mackey left his mark on the sport before succumbing to cancer at age 52
One of the great champions of sled dog mushing has passed away, as the cancer that Lance Mackey had been fighting for two decades took his life far too soon.
The son of former Iditarod champion Dick Mackey, Lance was raised in a dog mushing family. His dad won the 1978 race by a margin of only one second and when Lance’s brother Rick went on to win the race in 1983, the legacy of the Mackey family was born. Lance would outshine them both.
Racing since the womb, literally, Lance’s mother Kathy placed fourth in the Women’s North American Championships while seven months pregnant with him. When he finally got into racing under his own steam, he ripped through the sport, winning both the Yukon Quest and Iditarod four times each. In 2007 and 2008, he won both in the same year, becoming the first person to ever accomplish the feat.
Gruelling 1000-mile endurance races, both events call for a certain type of person to compete. Fiercely competitive, resourceful, hard as nails, and with more than a little bit of recklessness about them. Mackey had all of those in spades.
His demons dogged him for years as well, suffering well-documented addictions to both alcohol and drugs, struggles which contributed to two failed marriages.
But his flame through the sport, although brief, was as brilliant as any that ever shone, with Mackey winning an unprecedented four Iditarods in a row, from 2007 to 2010.
First diagnosed with cancer in 2001, Mackey had surgery and underwent chemotherapy to survive the scare and his career as a musher really took off. Over the next six years he would finish higher each competition until his breakout in 2007 when he won both the Iditarod and the Yukon, before going on to repeat the performance the following year and adding the Tustumena 200 to the honors taken in 2008. After two further years on top of the sport, his struggles with methamphetamine took their toll on his performance and he slid out of the top ten.
Diagnosed with Raynaud’s Syndrome, which limits circulation to the hands and feet and is exacerbated by the cold weather, he pulled out of competitive racing for four years. Since 2020, he has suffered one tragedy after another, with his mother’s death followed by his partner, Jenne Smith, being killed in a tragic ATV accident. Doctors discovered that his cancer had returned and he put up a fight to survive.
“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.”
Lance Mackey succumbed to throat cancer at the age of 52. Everyone at AS USA sends our heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones.