'See you in Nome!'

It wasn't the first time a musher uttered the phrase -- in fact, it's so well-known that it's the title of a video on Sven Haltmann's rookie Iditarod run -- but when Lance Mackey said it on his way out of White Mountain early Tuesday morning, it suddenly became a news-making sound bite, picked up, printed and broadcast to Iditarod fans everywhere. Every Mackey fan who could be in Nome was there, and those who couldn't make it wished they were there under the burled arch to welcome him again.

 

As he left White Mountain, Lance's comfortable two-hour lead assured him a record-setting fourth Iditarod championship, something no musher has ever achieved before, but longtime fans of "The Dogfather" are almost getting used to his record-breaking achievements. First four-time Yukon Quest champion, first Idita-Quest back-to-back champion (twice!), first musher nominated for an ESPY Award (twice), first musher nominated to Sports Illustrated's Toughest Athlete competition, and now the first musher to win four consecutive Iditarod races.

 

His considerable mushing achievements have resulted in a video, a book, a full calendar of speaking engagements, and appearances for causes such as Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong Cancer Awareness Campaign.

Lance Mackey proved his mettle as a dogman in 2007 when he took most of the same dogs from a Yukon Quest win straight into an unprecedented Iditarod win only two weeks later. The general consensus was that the stars had merely aligned for him; it was a fluke, he could never do it again.

He did.

Okay, said the pessimists in 2009, so he's a lucky son-of-a-gun and knows a thing or two about running dogs, but he'll never do it a third time.

Wrong again.

This year even his longtime fans were wondering if Lance could pull it off a fourth time. Hell, Lance admitted to wondering about it himself. A second-place showing in the Yukon Quest didn't help instill confidence, but, well, the Iditarod is different. Maybe he was just saving himself and his dogs for the race his dad helped start almost 40 years ago.

Maybe.

Whatever his strategy, or no strategy -- I think he nimbly goes with the flow and relies on his hard-won trail savvy to make a lot of it up as he goes along -- Lance and his team have done it again. Won another Iditarod, broken another record, given his fans another triumphant year's worth of bragging rights.

Thanks, Lance, from all of us. We may not all see you in Nome, but we'll be seeing you in the news clips, in the record books, and in the dreams of future mushers, who will speak your name in awe.