Mackey, Gatt spice up Fur Rondy sled dog race headlined by 7-time champ Streeper

Famous for being marathon mushers, Lance Mackey and Hans Gatt — the only four-time champions in the history of the Yukon Quest — will be sled dog sprinters this week.

They are part of a 26-musher field that will race in the Fur Rendezvous Open World Championship that begins its three-day run Friday in Anchorage.

Mackey, of Fairbanks, and Gatt, of Whitehorse, made their names in the Quest and the Iditarod, a pair of 1,000-mile races held in remote reaches of Alaska and northern Canada. This week they’ll drive their teams a fraction of that distance as they make daily 25-mile runs through Alaska’s biggest city.

It will be Mackey’s second time in the Fur Rondy race — he finished 14th in a 15-musher field in 2014 — and Gatt’s first time.

Racing begins each day at noon. Teams will leave in two-minute intervals from the start line at Fourth Avenue and D Street and head to Bicentennial Park on the other side of the city before returning to the downtown start/finish chute.

The Fur Rondy race dates back to 1946 and is the centerpiece of Anchorage’s annual winter festival. And as well-known as Mackey and Gatt are in the distance mushing world, the headliner this week is a man who has become Rondy royalty — seven-time champion Buddy Streeper of Fort Nelson, British Columbia.

Streeper, 38, won his seventh title last year. One more and he’ll match the eight championships won by Roland “Doc” Lombard; three more and he’ll match George Attla’s revered Rondy record of 10 titles.

Gatt is one of 10 rookies in the race and Streeper is the only past champion, although there are several worthy contenders in the likes of Amy Dunlap of Salcha, Marvin Kokrine of North Pole and Michael Tetzner of Burg, Germany.

“I woke up this morning and I felt really excited, and it’s because of those 10 new guys,” race marshal Janet Clarke said Thursday. “They represent a wide range of mushers that have done a lot of different things.”

Alix Crittenden of Bondurant, Wyoming, and Bruce Magnusson of Newberry, Michigan, are both veterans of the Wyoming Stage Stop race, Clarke said. Eli Campbell of Fairbanks is running Dave Turner dogs that are coming off a victory in last month’s Yukon Quest 300 middle-distance race, she said, and Tony Blandford of Anchorage is running a team of Streeper dogs. And Mya Hartum of Tofield, Alberta, is an 18-year-old taking a gap year between high school and college so she can race dogs.

“There isn’t any difference whether you are 18 or 70, male or female,” Clarke said of a race that in 2017 celebrated the triumphant return of Roxy Wright, who at age 66 won her fourth Rondy title — and her first in 24 years.

Mushers will be racing for a purse of $65,000. Clarke said there are a handful of races in Canada offering bigger purses, and she’s grateful dog drivers are still choosing to race in Alaska.

“One thing that is true about our race is people love the Rendezvous. We feel like the Rondy Open World Championship is a race that stands above any other race, it’s so historic, but I think we have to keep up,” Clarke said. “We’re grateful we have a race and a good purse and we hope our purse grows, as well as interest in our race.”

The addition of Mackey and Gatt will add some extra interest this year.

Mackey was the world’s most dominant musher a little more than a decade ago and remains one of Alaska’s favorite and most famous athletes. He won the Quest four straight times from 2005 to 2008 and won the Iditarod four straight times from 2007 to 2010, and he remains the only musher to win both races in the same year.

Gatt won the Quest three straight times from 2002 to 2004 and again in 2010. He placed second in the 2010 Iditarod and third in the 2011 Iditarod. He’s a respected sled maker whose career began as a sprint musher in Austria years before he became a Quest champion.

Mackey and Gatt aren’t the first distance mushers to give Rondy a try. In 2011, four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King made his first and only Rondy appearance and placed fourth.

Start order for Friday’s heat

1 — Brent Beck, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

2 — Gary Markley, Salcha

3 — Armin Johnson, Whitehorse, Yukon

4 — Kourosh Partow, Chugiak

5 — Danny Beck, Hay River, Northwest Territories

6 — Don Cousins, Crooked Creek

7 — Todd Whitcomb, Wasilla

8 — Marvin Kokrine, North Pole

9 — Guy Girard, Saint-Thomas de Joliette, Quebec

10 — Greg Taylor, Fairbanks

11 — Blayne “Buddy” Streeper, Fort Nelson, B.C.

12 — Jeffrey Conn, Ester

13 — Michael Tetzner, Burg, Germany

14 — Lance Mackey, Fairbanks

15 — Wendy Callis, Fairbanks

16 — Amy Dunlap, Salcha

17 — Tony Blanford (R), Anchorage

18 — Frank Habermann (R) Clam Gulch

19 — Alix Crittenden (R), Bondurant, Wyoming

20 — Thad McCracken (R), Mosier, Oregon

21 — Erick Laforce (R), Lanoraie, Quebec

22 — Bruce Magnusson (R), Newberry, Michigan

23 — Rejean Therrien (R), St-Emile, Quebec

24 — Eli Campbell (R), Fairbanks

25 — Mya Hartum, Tofield, Alberta

26 — Hans Gatt (R), Whitehorse, Yukon