Defending champion Lance Mackey recorded his fourth consecutive win of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race Wednesday morning, beating his closest competitor by 15 minutes.

Mackey, 37, crossed the finish line in Whitehorse at 1:23 a.m. PT, ending the 1,600-kilometre journey and capturing the $35,000 US top prize and four ounces of gold. The win makes Mackey the first to capture the Yukon Quest four years in a row.

Yukon Quest four-time winner Lance Mackey crossed the finish line in Whitehorse early Wednesday morning.
(Cheryl Kawaja/CBC)

"Yeah! They're happy, I'm happy," Mackey said, patting his 11 sled dogs and feeding them treats at the end of their long, gruelling run through Alaska and the Yukon.

Ken Anderson, 35, an experienced musher running his first Yukon Quest, came in at 1:38 a.m.

"I thought you was a little closer," Mackey said to Anderson at the finish line.

"Yeah, I was for a while; I was four minutes behind you at one point," Anderson replied.

The race, which began Feb. 9 in Fairbanks, had been very close between the two mushers in recent days, with both arriving at the last few checkpoints within minutes of each other.

After Mackey led the first half of the race, Anderson took the lead early Monday when Mackey took a wrong route on the trail between Dawson City and Pelly Crossing.

Mackey regained the lead when he arrived in Braeburn, about 160 kilometres from Whitehorse, early Tuesday morning. But that lead was tight, with Anderson roughly 20 minutes behind him.

"I've pretty much figured he'd be right with me. I keep hearing that he's gaining on me, but I haven't seen him. I could sense that he's there," Mackey said.

"Unfortunately he came up a little short, but yeah, my hat's off to him.… It kept me on my toes and thinking about my next move. It was interesting. It was a real good race."

But the competition between the two Fairbanks-based mushers is not over, as they are expected to face off again soon in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a 1,850-kilometre race that begins March 1 in Alaska.

Meanwhile, Yukon musher Michelle Phillips and Alaskan mushers David Dalton and Brent Sass are battling for third place Wednesday. They are expected to arrive in Whitehorse sometime that night.