The newest class of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame will be inducted tonight in a ceremony that begins at 6 at the Conoco Phillips atrium downtown.
Admission is free but late arrivals might not find room to watch the presentations and acceptance speeches. Seating is limited.
Joining the Hall of Fame are four individuals:
• Lance Mackey of Fairbanks, the three-time defending Iditarod champion and the first musher to win the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year;
• Reggie Joule of Kotzebue, who dominated the blanket toss for years and is one of the state's most famous and successful Native sports athletes;
• Rosey Fletcher of Girdwood, bronze medalist in the snowboard parallel giant slalom at the 2006 Winter Olympics;
• Bradford Washburn of Boston, who blazed the now-popular West Buttress route on Mount McKinley and whose photography provided some of the first records of the peak's topography. Washburn died in 2007 at age 96.
Also earning a spot in the Hall of Fame are two moments and one event:
• The 1978 photo finish on Nome's Front Street, where Dick Mackey edged Rick Swenson in the closest Iditarod in history;
• Noorvik runner Elliott Sampson's monumental upset victory in the 1981 high school cross-country running championships;
• The Midnight Sun baseball classic, the decades-old game in Fairbanks played at 10 p.m. every year on the summer solstice without the aid of artificial lights.
Iditarod blog: Mackey men in town for Hall of Fame ceremony
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