Iditarod dog race champion Susan Butcher dies

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Aug 6 (Reuters) Susan Butcher, four-time winner of the grueling Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, died of cancer. She was 51.

Butcher was not the first woman to win the Iditarod, but she dominated the 1,850 km sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome during the 1980s and early 1990s.

She was one of the world's most celebrated female athletes and inspired a popular slogan: ''Alaska - Where Men are Men and Women Win the Iditarod.'' Alaska Sen Ted Stevens, a family friend, announced Butcher's death yesterday. ''Susan was a remarkable and courageous woman.

Alaska shall not forget her,'' Stevens said in a news release.

Butcher had been suffering from leukemia, diagnosed in 2005. She died of complications from a bone marrow transplant while receiving treatment at a Seattle hospital.

''I don't know that I've ever been any more shook up since John F Kennedy died,'' Jeff King, a four-time champion who won the Iditarod this year, told Reuters.

''I don't think I had any idea how hard this was going to be.

Because only now do I realize that she represented even more than a friend, a mentor for the sport.'' Butcher grew up in Massachusetts but a love of the outdoors and sled-dog racing took her to Alaska. She was a protege of the late Joe Redington, the founder of the Iditarod.

With Redington, Butcher made headlines in 1979 when she drove the first team of sled dogs to the summit of Mt McKinley, North America's tallest peak.

By the early 1980s, Butcher had been expected to be the first woman to win the Iditarod. She was leading in the 1985 race, but a collision with a moose killed some of her dogs. That year, Libby Riddles made a daring dash during a Bering Sea storm and was the first woman to win the race.

Butcher went on to win the Iditarod in four of the next five years. She retired from racing in 1994 to raise a family.

Her husband, attorney David Monson, is a past champion of the 1,610 km Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

Butcher leaves two daughters.

REUTERS DKA PM1014