updated 8:53 p.m. ET March 14, 2007

NOME, Alaska - When it comes to a tough fight, winning the longest sled dog race in the world was no match for what it took Lance Mackey to beat cancer.

Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday and did something no other musher has done — get back-to-back wins in the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

In 2001, he was diagnosed with neck cancer and underwent surgery and radiation.

With a feeding tube into his stomach and still undergoing cancer treatment, Mackey started the 2002 Iditarod, but was forced to scratch in Ophir — still more than 400 miles into the race from Anchorage.

Mackey is now cancer free, and his kennel is named Lance Mackey’s Comeback Kennel.

“Don’t ever doubt I can’t do something,” Mackey said in Nome after his win. “I lived through cancer.”

“I made it through stronger than ever to make my dream a reality,” he said.

Mackey status as a cancer survivor and champion musher will inspire other people with cancer, said Christine Schultz, 42, of Nome, a medical social worker who stood out in subzero temperatures with co-workers from Norton Sound Regional Hospital to watch Mackey cross the finish line.

Not only did Mackey’s dog team look strong, wagging their tails and barking when they came in, but Mackey looked good, too, particularly after mushing a team a distance equal to going from New York to Miami. He ran up Front Street next to his sled with both arms raised in victory high above his head.

Some of Schultz’s patients are being treated for cancer, and Mackey is going to be a powerful symbol for them, she said.

“I think it gives people hope they can overcome cancer and live their dreams,” she said.

Connie Madden, 72, who owns Fat Freddies Restaurant in Nome with her husband, was diagnosed with lymphoma 14 years ago. She is cancer-free now but didn’t think that would ever happen when she was diagnosed.

“When they told me I had cancer — you think your life is over,” she said. “For new cancer patients, they can see what Lance Mackey has done. Cancer didn’t kill him, maybe it’s not going to kill me.”

Cancer survivor DeeDee Jonrowe, 53, of Willow, competing in her 25th Iditarod and still looking for a first-place finish — she’s come in second twice — had to bow out early from this year’s race.

While feeding her dogs and sipping hot chocolate early on in the race, she talked about what might be making her feel so lousy this year.

“I am bone-tired,” Jonrowe said at Finger Lake, only about a quarter of the way to Nome.

Jonrowe was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and underwent a double mastectomy. She said she has gone through four surgeries.

“It is harder after chemo,” Jonrowe said. “I am not going to be silly and try to pretend that didn’t make a difference. It did.”

However, she said she wasn’t really complaining because she survived cancer and was alive to talk about it and run another Iditarod.

Jonrowe scratched at the next checkpoint at Rainy Pass after taking several spills on the trail, breaking her little finger and injuring her hand.

At the musher’s banquet before the race in Anchorage, Jonrowe talked about what it would be like to be on the trail this year without four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher, who died of leukemia last August. The two women started out as competitors but it was going through cancer that brought them closer and cemented their friendship, she said.

Butcher was diagnosed with cancer three months after Jonrowe, she said.

“I haven’t been on the Iditarod without Susan,” Jonrowe said. “I want her here. She was my sister.”

The two, she said, were engaged in a “medical war” together and Jonrowe desperately wanted to win the Iditarod this year for Butcher, this year’s honorary musher.

Butcher’s husband, Dave Monson, and their 11-year-old daughter, Tekla, are driving dog teams on the trail and headed to Nome on a memorial run.

Monson said in some way he feels he’s taking Susan to Nome with him one last time. He left some of her ashes at her favorite spot called “Old Woman” between Kaltag and Unalakleet.

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