As Lance Mackey and Jeff King approached (and reached) the native village of Koyuk this morning he was able to hold his lead. According to GPS tracking on the Iditarod website, its been a close race since leaving Shaktoolik about half an hour apart, at times King was about a mile behind Mackey, and at other times running 3 or 4 miles behind.  They arrived into Koyuk around 1:30pm just under 10 minutes apart.

All of these villages along the Bering Sea coast (Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Koyuk, Elim, Golovin, White Mountain) are amazing places with beautiful and friendly people.  When living in Nome I had the opportunity on several occasions to spend time meeting the people who live in these small communities (usually 200-300 people live in these villages on the Iditarod trail, except for Unalakleet where nearly 1,000 people live).  The people of this area were our listeners while working at KICY, and would always welcome us into their home.  It is a tough region to live in, and the awkward mix of modern life and the subsistence lifestyle has never been stronger.  With an average of 15-20% of all families in these villages living below the poverty line (mainly because there are very few jobs in each village) the need to remain subsisting off the land is great, however satellite television and DSL Internet are so common now in villages that much of modern American culture is also part of daily life.  Many of these villages are “dry” locations, due to the abuse of alcohol and its extremely negative effects on these remote places, despite so many challenges the people of the region remain strong and find ways to survive.  The Iditarod is something that everyone in the villages look forward to and enjoy being a part of.

I’m still curious whats going to happen between Mackey and King, in Unalakleet yesterday Lance spoke to reporters about how he just wanted to do well, how he was already thinking about next year’s team, and if you go back to the beginning of the race in Anchorage Mackey always talked about wanting to have a good showing in the All Alaska Sweepstakes over winning his second Iditarod. Compare that to King - he was the first into Unalakleet and immediately mentioned going onto winning his fifth Iditarod this year, bragged on his team, and had a pretty upbeat attitude.  Last year after coming into Unalakleet Jeff King sounded like Mackey did this year, he told me about how if he didn’t win, he hoped Lance would because it was “such a magical story”.  Perhaps Mackey’s quotes this year were taken out of context when I read them, he’s holding King back pretty well right now…..but Nome isn’t just right around the corner either.

Later today on I want to talk about the All Alaska Sweepstakes that starts in just about two weeks, the impact that it’s had on this year’s Iditarod, and what makes this upcoming race so special.

Posted by admin on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 1:42 pm.