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Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest

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Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs hosts an annual hot dog eating contest at the site of their first restaurant in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. According to oral history, the contest has been held every year since 1916 except for 1941 (as a protest to the war) and 1971 (as a protest to civil unrest). The contest is usually held at noon on July 4, Independence Day, and lasts 12 minutes. In 2004 the contest began at 12:40pm presumably because ESPN was covering the even live for the first time. The competition draws many spectators and worldwide press coverage.

The rules

There are 20 contestants standing behind a 30-ft-long table with hotdogs and drinks. Condiments are optional. Whoever eats (and keeps down) the most hot dogs (and buns) is the winner. Partially eaten hot dogs count and the granularity of measurement is eighths of a hot dog. Winners receive a mustard-colored belt (of "unknown age and value" according to George Shea), and a "year's supply of Nathan's hotdogs" (actually, two cases). There is no cash award, and contestants must qualify at preliminary contests held around the united states. A noted exception is William "The Refrigerator" Perry, who competed in 2003 as a celebrity contestant. George Shea has stated that the celebrity contestant experiment will likely not be repeated.

The Japanese domination

This eating contest had been a national favorite since its beginning. However, started from 1996, Japanese eaters are taking away the prize every year except for 1999. In comparison with most contestants of the U.S. who are tall and fat, Japanese contestants are usually very thin and not that tall. But they are breaking the records almost on a yearly basis. Despite of their collective will to take back the prize, most U.S. contestants could not even come close to Japanese records.

These Japanese contestants are sponsored by TV Tokyo's (テレビ東京) TV Champion (TVチャンピオン), a competition show started from 1992. TV Champion is a weekly TV program whose subjects has been mostly food-related (sushi championship, fast-eating championship, kids' cooking championship ...).

The Japanese dominance was sometimes overwhelming, for example, in 2000, the first, second and third places were all taken by Japanese contestants (Kazutoyo Arai, 新井和響, 25; Misao "Beast" Fujita, 藤田操, 24; Takako Akasaka, 赤阪尊子, (female), 22).

A partial list of winners

  1. Mike Devito
  2. -
  3. Ed Krachie
  4. Hirofumi Nakajima (中嶋広文) (23 1/4 hot dogs) (World Record)
  5. Hirofumi Nakajima (24 1/2 hot dogs) (World Record)
  6. Hirofumi Nakajima (19 hot dogs)
  7. Steve Keiner (20 1/4 hot dogs)
  8. Kazutoyo "Rabbit" Arai (新井和響) (25 1/8 hot dogs) (World Record)
  9. Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi (小林尊) (50 hot dogs) (World Record)
  10. Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi (50 1/2 hot dogs) (World Record)
  11. Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi (44 1/2 hot dogs)
  12. Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi (53 1/2 hot dogs) (New World Record)

External links

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