Holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and his 3 1/2-year-old daughter, Asa, in the other, Marc McKenna tipped the bottle up, took a big swig and then shook it up and sprayed family and friends who had surrounded him in the Iron Dog finish chute.
Next to McKenna, racing partner Dusty Van Meter was being interviewed by an Anchorage television station as his 9-year-old son, Brayden, sat next to him on his still-smoking Ski-Doo.
Queen’s “We Are The Champions” blared from speakers sitting on top of an RV parked on the Chena River.
To the Iron Dog victors go the spoils.
McKenna, of Anchorage, and Van Meter, of Kasilof, cruised to a record-breaking victory in the Iron Dog on Saturday, capturing bragging rights to what is billed as the world’s toughest snowmachine race.
The bragging rights also include a $50,000 first-place prize to share.
The two Ski-Doo riders crossed the finish line on the Chena River in downtown Fairbanks at 12:22 p.m. to the cheering of a few hundred spectators, most of whom were clad in some kind of snowmachine garb.
Their official time on the 2,000-mile course from Big Lake to Nome to Fairbanks of 35 hours, 39 minutes, 56 seconds was almost 45 minutes ahead of the second-place team of Tyler Huntington and Tre West and obliterated the 2009 course record of 37:19:08, even though the trail was approximately 70 miles longer. Their average speed over 2,000 miles was 56.97 mph.
“It was a fast trail, and we had a little bit of luck,” McKenna, still holding his daughter, said. “You gotta have the ball roll your way in this race and this year it did.”
While both McKenna, 37, and Van Meter, 42, have won the race before with other partners, this was their first win together as a team after hooking up four years ago. It was Van Meter’s fourth Iron Dog title and McKenna’s third.
It marked only the second time in the 28-year history of the race that a Ski-Doo team has won the Iron Dog.
“You can’t beat this machine,” Van Meter said, nodding toward his black and yellow 600cc Ski-Doo, which didn’t look any less for the wear after traveling 2,000 across the Alaska wilderness.
The only other Ski-Doo win came when Van Meter won his last title in 2004 with Mark Carr.
“I was beginning to think if it wasn’t for bad luck we wouldn’t have any luck,” Van Meter said, noting he and McKenna were in first place last year on the Yukon River, only about 450 miles from the finish, when they ran into a hole in the river to sink their chances for a win.
But this year, bad luck struck their competitors, most notably the Polaris team of Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad, who appeared on the verge of catching and passing McKenna and Van Meter on Friday before encountering mechanical problems about 350 miles from the finish.
Minnick and Olstad, the 2009 champs and previous course record holders, were only nine minutes behind McKenna and Van Meter leaving Galena, 400 miles from the finish. The had sliced 17 minutes off of the 26-minute lead McKenna and Van Meter had leaving Unalakleet.
That was as close as they would come, however. A broken jackshaft on one of their machines ended any hopes they had for catching the leaders. They spent five hours in Ruby waiting for parts and limped into Tanana. On Saturday, they ran into more mechanical problems, which cost them another four-plus hours. They ended up finishing in 11th place, almost nine hors behind McKenna and Van Meter.
When Van Meter got to Tanana Friday afternoon and heard Minnick and Olstad had broken down, he wasn’t surprised.
“We knew if they made 15 minutes up on us they were beating through stuff we had crawled through,” Van Meter said of how hard Minnick and Olstad were pushing. “It was good trail but it wasn’t smooth. There was some rough stuff. There were ice chunks all over the coast. It’s nasty trail here and there. When you get that many miles under a machine you gotta take it easy now and then.”
Racers averaged more than 95 mph on some stretches of the on the Yukon River on the southbound leg to Fairbanks. Huntington and West averaged 99.6 mph between Kaltag and Galena while Minnick and Olstad were close behind at 98 mph. McKenna and Van Meter averaged 93 mph on that stretch.
Sporting a missing patch of skin on the right side of his forehead as a result of frostbite, McKenna admitted to looking over his shoulder for Minnick and Olstad.
“We knew they were coming and they were pushing hard,” McKenna said. “We didn’t plan on letting them get that close but I got stuck on my way into Kaltag and we lost 15 minutes. But we kept our head about us and kept riding. When we left Galena we were ready to start getting on it.”
Even with a 48-minute lead leaving Tanana on Saturday morning, McKenna and Van Meter didn’t play it conservative. They averaged almost 75 mph from Tanana to North Pole before backing off slightly on the final 35-mile leg to Fairbanks down the Chena River, where they averaged 52.6 mph.
“You don’t ever know if you’ve got it in the bag,” McKenna said.
Second-place was worth $36,000 for Huntington and West, who were racing together for the first time. Huntington, of Fairbanks, had won the previous two races with Chris Olds but the two racers parted ways this year to ride with new partners. Ironically, Olds and his new partner, Mike Morgan, were one of the three teams Huntington and West passed on the 900-mile southbound leg from Nome to Fairbanks to climb from fifth place to second place.
“I’m happy with where we are,” Huntington said after he and West drove their Polarises across the finish line. “You can’t ask for anything else except one spot higher.”
Even though they knew their only chance for a win was slim facing a 48-minute deficit over the last 291 miles, Huntington said he and West never let off the throttle between Tanana and Fairbanks.
“We pushed it all the way in,” Huntington said. “We never let off until right around the corner (before the finish).”
Third place went to the Polaris team of Ryan Sottosanti and Andy Zwink, who finished in 37 hours, 33 minutes, 54 seconds to win $18,000 in prize money.
They were followed in fourth place by Morgan and Olds, also on Polarises, with a time of 38:06:28 that earned them $12,000. Rounding out the top five was the veteran Arctic Cat team of Todd Palin and Scott Davis in 35:25:09. They won $10,000.
Twenty-one of the 30 teams that started the race reached the finish line in Fairbanks.
