In all likelihood, the winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race this year will be one of these four men:

• Defending champ Lance Mackey from Fairbanks.

• Four-time champ Jeff King from Denali Park.

• Four-time champ Martin Buser from Big Lake.

• Or 2004 champ Mitch Seavey from Sterling.

Why? Because they all know how to win.

But maybe more importantly, because all the other top contenders know only how to lose.

Iditarod history is pretty clear on what losing does to mushers. It makes them losers.

The longer they go without winning, the less likely it is they will ever win.

Back in the day, some people thought the late, great Susan Butcher would never win because she didn't know how. Butcher went nine races, an inordinately large number, without a victory. Then, she married Dave Monson and everything changed. They formed a perfect partnership.

Monson helped scheme a victory to beat Joe Garnie in 1986. Monson flew the whole trail that year, stopping at almost every checkpoint to consult with Butcher, sometimes helping to prepare checkpoints for her arrival. It was all perfectly legal, though the Iditarod would subsequently write a rule prohibiting this sort of morale-building effort.

Whatever the case, it helped Butcher get that critical first victory, and once she knew how to win, three more championships quickly followed.

In the history of the race, only one musher has gone longer than Butcher without winning before finally managing to notch a victory. That was Seavey. He went 11 years before that 2004 championship.

Everyone else in Iditarod history has won fairly quickly, or failed to get there.

Five-time champ Rick Swenson from Two Rivers won on his second try. It was the same for two-time champ Robert Sorlie from Hurdal, Norway.

Four-time champ Doug Swingley from Lincoln, Mont. -- the first musher to demonstrate that you don't need to live in Alaska to win the Iditarod -- finished his first three Iditarods in the top-10 and then won on the fourth try.

King won on his fourth try, too. But it was really more like his third. He ran his first Idiatrod in 1981, then focused on other races for a decade. He didn't return to the Iditarod until 1991 when he finished 12th. He was sixth in 1992 and won in 1993.

Buser looks like Butcher on paper. He, too, ran nine Iditarods before winning, but in his case the first three don't really count. He worked for the late Earl Norris of Willow in the early 1980s, taking Norris's purebred Siberians to Nome. Siberians have never won the Iditarod and are never going to win the Iditarod.

Once Buser started his own kennel of Alaska huskies, he put down five top-10 finishes and won on the sixth try.

If you go all the way back to the start of the Iditarod and crunch the numbers of races it takes before a champ wins, the average is 412, and that's an average that counts those years Buser wasted running Siberians and the years it took the very gifted Butcher to decide that yes, indeed, she could beat all of the men.

If the numbers are telling for the champs, they are even more telling for the many contenders who never won.

Many people thought Vern Halter from Willow would some day become an Iditarod champion. But the nine-time, top-10 finisher never won. After 18 races, he accepted reality and retired. Same for Lavon Barve from Wasilla with eight top-10 finishes in 14 races before deciding victory was never to be.

Ditto Charlie Boulding from Manley, with eight top-10s in 13 races and finally out. And the late Herbie Nayokpuk, the Shishmaref Cannonball, also eight top-10s in 11 races and done.

The list of former contenders who failed to win early and subsequently never won at all is long: Jerry Austin from Saint Michael, Eep Anderson from McGrath, Dewey Halverson from Trapper Creek, Terry Adkins from Sand Coulee, Mont., Garnie from Teller; Sonny Lindner from Fairbanks, and more.

They were all given a shot at the Iditarod's golden ring but never grasped it. The more races they lost, the better they became at losing.

Some of today's contenders might well take note. People like John Baker from Kotzebue and Ramey Smyth from Willow could go on being top-10 contenders for a long time. But being top-10 contenders may well doom them to being only top-10 contenders.

People who are almost winning get conservative. They become reluctant to take the risks necessary to win because they don't want to lose third or fifth or eighth, all of which are pretty good showings.

Unfortunately, the history of the Iditarod is that if you're not gambling with new ideas -- be they in training, feeding, breeding or race strategy -- you're probably not going to win.

Buser -- whose 2002 team still holds the Iditarod course record of 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes -- is especially interesting in this regard. He is one of those past champs who has been willing to regularly alter his program, and he has paid the price almost as often as he has won. He went from seventh in 2000 to 24th in 2001 to 1st in 2002, and from 24th in 2006 to 4th in 2007.

Others such as Baker and Ed Iten from Kotzebue and Paul Gebhardt from Kasilof have been more consistent top-10 finishers, but they have never won and history indicates they have now reached the point where they never will. Baker starts his 14th Iditarod this year, Gebhardt his 13th, Iten his 11th.

And they're not the only ones saddled by the historical precedent that you better win fairly early or forget it.

DeeDee Jonrowe from Willow will be running her 27th Iditarod, Ramy Smyth from Willow his 15th, Linwood Fiedler from Willow his 17th, Ken Anderson from Fairbanks his ninth.

All are likely to contend at some point. None are likely to win.

They are at that point where Iditarod mushers really need to decide whether they're in the race to win, or simply in the race because they like to be in the race, much like Tim Osmar from Ninilchik.

The winner of three junior Iditarods from 1982 to 1984 and the son of Iditarod champ Dean Osmar, Tim was for years one of those mushers expected to someday win an Iditarod. He came close with a third-place finish in 1992. He was in the top-10 every year but one from 1987 to 1997, but the planets just never quite aligned for Osmar the younger.

In 1998, he fell to 17th. He hasn't made the top 10 since. He dropped to 33rd in 2007, sat out last year injured, and is guiding visually impaired Oregon musher Rachel Scdoris along the trail this year.

It's unlikely they will even crack the top 30. Scdoris has three Iditarod starts but only one finish. She was 57th in 2006. She won't win either, because winning is hard.

One of the first things you have to do is believe you can win, really believe, not just say you believe. That is an easy thing to say but a hard thing to do. It is an even harder thing to do when your life is full of memories of all the times you lost.