A win in the Iditarod with 13 dogs that had won another 1,000-mile race 20 days before. The comeback from cancer. Living on a beach with a new wife and two stepdaughters. Dogs that shriek with excitement and wag their tails after racing the distance from Maine to Colorado. The number 13 bib that his brother and father wore when they won the Iditarod on their sixth try, the same number he wore when he won on his sixth try.

It's just too much, this Lance Mackey story. In a sled dog website's chat room, they're debating who would play him if someone decides to make a movie. Johnny Depp is the early favorite. But what studio is going to buy that screenplay? Who's going to believe this isn't fiction? Lance?

“It's an amazing story to me, and it's my story,” the 36-year-old musher said at his home north of Fairbanks. “It blows my mind to think that five or six years ago I was living in a tent, starving to death.”