Mackey heads down river but team's health questionable

Great benefits await the first musher to Ruby, though, including $5,000 cash and seven-course meal served by the executive chef of the Millennium Alaskan Hotel Anchorage.

Mackey's appetite for back-to-back Iditarod titles remains healthy.

"It wouldn't make me feel very good at all to get these awards and have a team that's beat up," he said. "And at the moment I'm first here by some kind of luck -- because my team isn't 100 percent."

Perhaps that's why Jeff King appeared to be in such a playful mood when he arrived second in Ruby, two and a half hours behind the leader.

The four-time champion King is also wondering how long Mackey's dogs can hold up.

Many of Mackey's dogs are in their fourth 1,000-plus mile race in two years.

"At some point all mortals become tired," King said. "Whatever. If he wasn't here ahead of me I'd feel like I was setting some kind of Iditarod speed record. It's all a matter of perspective."

It may come down to fire power. King's 16 dogs made the trip from Cripple 45 minutes faster than Mackey's team.

"Don't count me out just yet," Mackey said.

Why not have visions of treasure under the Burled Arch, though, when you are the first musher to Ruby.

Mackey has set so many precedents in his mushing career, so what's one more? He wolfed down all seven courses of his commemorative meal for making it to the Yukon-Ruby checkpoint first.

It's another, unofficial, Iditarod record.

But whose team looked better heading out of Ruby -- Mackey's or King's? It's a close call but was almost a moment of d–j– vu. Last year, it was King in the lead at Unalakleet when Mackey came charging from behind and asked the four-time champion how surprised he was at the distance Mackey was making up.

King seemed to have recalled that moment in Iditarod XXXV and played off of it.

Kevin Wells is on the Iditarod Trail. Contact Channel 2 Sports at csokaitis@ktuu.com