Lance Mackey has successfully defended his championship in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and Bismarck native Heather Siirtola is still in the hunt to finish.

Mackey, who won the race last year in record time, didn't quite match his pace from 2007. But he still crossed the finish line in Nome ahead of everyone else this morning, earning him $69,000 and a new truck. He can park the truck in his driveway next to the one he won last year. In 2007, Mackey became the first musher to win the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest and 1,150-mile Iditarod in the same year. The races are run back-to-back.

He turned that trick again this year, which has to make him at least one of the most dominant mushers in history.

Mackey completed the Anchorage-to-Nome trail in just under nine and a half days, sliding under Nome's famous burled arch at 2:46 Alaska time this morning - which was 5:46 a.m. here.

A little more than 350 miles behind him, Siirtola was still in the running. She had stopped at the checkpoint in Kaltag, Alaska, shortly after midnight this morning. Siirtola slipped from 76th place to 80th, but was two days ahead of her pace from last year, when she was a rookie.

Dann Stuart, Siirtola's step-father, said it looked like she might finish the race on Saturday.