Photos: Musher Aliy Zirkle breaks fan's bone while arm-wrestling

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An X-ray show the injury to Grace Liu's arm after her arm wrestling contest with Aliy Zirkle on Wednesday, March 19, 2015.

NOME -- There was a sickening pop, followed by an eerie silence as the crowd inside Breakers Bar realized what they'd witnessed: Aliy Zirkle had just broken some woman's arm.

Grace Liu learned a painful lesson about tangling with mushers Wednesday night in Nome when Zirkle, a 45-year-old sled dog racing superstar from Two Rivers, snapped the California lawyer's arm like a piece of driftwood during an arm-wrestling match just hours after the 15-time Iditarod finisher guided her team to a fifth-place finish in the 2015 Iditarod.

"Everyone gasped," said Liu, a 36-year-old patent lawyer from Fresno. "And you know it takes a lot to quiet a bar in Nome."

Zirkle said it was her first arm-wrestling contest. And likely her last.

"God, I feel bad," she said Friday.

Read more: Post-Iditarod arm-wrestling match leaves fan with broken bone and musher Zirkle mortified