Joey Chestnut Destroys Kobayashi's World Record!!!

[tannenj]

i believe this dude threw out the opening pitch yesterday at shea stadium.

[Mano]

Kobayashi vs Giant Bear

[XXXNoahXXX]

Has anyone here consumed so much of something that people can smell it coming out of your pores?

I tried a hot dog contest with a friend once, but I couldn't bring myself to dunk the bun in water, so we each ate like 12 dry then decided it was dumb to keep eating til puke, so we stopped.

[guids]

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone here consumed so much of something that people can smell it coming out of your pores?

I tried a hot dog contest with a friend once, but I couldn't bring myself to dunk the bun in water, so we each ate like 12 dry then decided it was dumb to keep eating til puke, so we stopped.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ya, they are called White Castles. And really, you only need to eat like 3.

[samjjones]

[ QUOTE ]
Isn't that the guy who was at the Nathan's competition last year? The one the announcer started calling a "great American" for his eating accomplishments.

[/ QUOTE ]

gus - Yes. The best part of this story is that Chestnut is only 23. I believe the competitive eating prime is like 27.

I think he may be able to bring glory back to the USA where pretenders like Ed Cookie Jarvis and Badlands Booker have failed us.

[bryan4967]

worst sport ever.

[Duke]

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone here consumed so much of something that people can smell it coming out of your pores?

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this a shout-out to Koreans and Indians in da house? Someone correct me if I'm wrong about their identifying odors being a result of their diets.

[KotOD]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Isn't that the guy who was at the Nathan's competition last year? The one the announcer started calling a "great American" for his eating accomplishments.

[/ QUOTE ]

gus - Yes. The best part of this story is that Chestnut is only 23. I believe the competitive eating prime is like 27.

I think he may be able to bring glory back to the USA where pretenders like Ed Cookie Jarvis and Badlands Booker have failed us.

[/ QUOTE ]

Aw man, c'mon. Booker has 9 records, including 49 doughnuts in 8 minutes! Just because he can't eat hot dogs, don't slag on the dude.

Jarvis has 11 records -- I think he ate almost seven pounds of spaghetti in 10 minutes.

[samjjones]

[ QUOTE ]
Hot dogs one and two disappear into Joey Chestnut's mouth like a pair of flies going down a well. A flour-dusted bun gets tossed in afterward.

Hot dogs number three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine ... 10, 11, 12 ... 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 ... 18, 19, 20 -- all of them. Gone.

Joey Chestnut is only halfway through his meal, and he's been at it for about four minutes. A CD player on his kitchen counter blares, "Going the Distance," the inspirational ballad from the movie "Rocky."

It's Thursday night, and Chestnut's roommate, Nate Yates, 25, is hovering over Joey in their San Jose bachelor pad, helping the reigning American hot dog speed-eating champion train for the main event: Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, N.Y.

"C'mon baby," Yates shouts at his roomie, whose cheeks are bursting with hot dog and sopping wet buns. "Put it down, put it down -- chew, chew, chew, chew."

At 23, Joey Chestnut is a rising, if humble, star in the world of competitive eating. Just last month, the "sport" earned a glut of attention after two books on the subject were released, along with a documentary and countless magazine articles. Most of the attention was lavished on the sport's more enigmatic personalities, namely Takeru Kobayashi, the skinny 32-year-old Japanese man who has won the Nathan's competition for the past five years.

Yet Chestnut, whose rise to prominence occurred in the past 15 months, has been largely ignored. He was an unknown until April 2005 when he beat 37-year-old American Sonya Thomas, the world's No. 2 ranked eater, at a fried asparagus contest in Stockton.

Unlike the attention-grubbing eaters commonly profiled by the sport's literati, Chestnut is a self-described shy-guy, a former band nerd from Vallejo.

But oh, how he can eat.

In the past year Chestnut devoured world records for waffles (18.5 in 10 minutes), pork ribs (5.5 pounds in 12 minutes), grilled cheese sandwiches (32.5 in 10 minutes) and chicken wings -- 173 in 30 minutes, wiping out the previous record by 29 wings.

And on May 18, at a Nathan's qualifier in Las Vegas, Chestnut scarfed 50 dogs in 12 minutes, shattering the old record of 37.

"Joey Chestnut," marvels George Shea, president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, "is clearly going to change the face of American competitive eating. He may become the greatest eater in America, if not the world."

For the next five weeks, Chestnut will practice up to three nights a week in his apartment. He's working on building up stomach capacity and jaw strength. He'll follow a routine of buying generic dogs at 79 cents a pound and fetching discount Wonder Bread buns from the corporate plant in Santa Clara. In the final week, the college student will splurge the 50 bucks to get a box of real Nathan's dogs shipped out, just so he can acquire the distinct taste.

Chestnut wants his performance to be memorable.

"I've got a goal," Chestnut said one afternoon at lunch. "And it's way more than 50."

Hot dogs number 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: absolute vapor. Inside Chestnut's kitchen the dogs flow down his throat like a pork-colored hose, a new one folding up in his cheeks every few minutes. When that occurs, he reaches for a Big Gulp cup filled with tap water.

"Drink it down," Yates instructs Chestnut -- a corner man on his fighter. "Get it down, there you go -- now chew, chew, baby, chew."

Chestnut, at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, sways and wiggles as he eats. He grabs the dogs with his left hand, sometimes two at a time, and like a man playing a harmonica, runs a hand across his mouth -- and then reaches down for two more. With his right hand, meanwhile, he'll cram in a hot dog bun, and repeat.

"I'm like a marathoner," Chestnut had explained earlier. "I need to find my rhythm: Bite, bite, swallow. Bite, bite, swallow ... Like a marathoner, my rhythm is everything. My first hot dog should be as easy as my last."

Chestnut was not always so conscientious about technique. As the fifth of six kids in an Italian-Irish family, raw speed at the dinner table was all he needed.

"There was always plenty of food to go around," Chestnut's oldest sister Carmen said. "There just wasn't seconds. You had to act fast."

Once he enrolled at San Jose State, Yates recalls meeting Chestnut in the dorms for the first time and taking a trip down to Iguana's Taqueria with a few others. While everyone ordered a regular burrito, Chestnut took on the super large burrito and downed it in a flash.

"We were like, 'Damn, Joe,' " Yates said. " 'What's with that?' "

The taqueria -- a staple for SJSU students -- eventually hosted a burrito-eating contest. Entering it was a cinch, Chestnut said, a goof for some easy laughs. He polished the five-and-a-quarter-pound prey in four minutes. The second place contestant finished 10 minutes later.

"I started to get the feeling I could be good at this," Chestnut said. "It was easy for me."

Hot dog 26 is a problem. As the CD loops to Static-X's metal roar, "Push It," Chestnut fumbles a wiener onto the floor. In an official competition, the faux pas would cost Chestnut a dog from his final total. But here, beneath his trophies and with his corner man's approval, Chestnut manages to bend over, grab it and shove it in his mouth.

Six minutes in, a softball-sized paste of bread-and-hot dog fills Chestnut's mouth near capacity. The aroma alone is enough to make some men nauseous. But if an eater vomits in competition, he's disqualified, so much of Chestnut's training is practicing to resist his gag reflex.

Chestnut had mentioned at lunch the day before, "I try to convince my body that it's OK to have all this food in it. I know what being full feels like, but I have to treat it like any other feeling -- sadness, anger -- and either ignore it, or move through it."

In his short time competing, Chestnut has earned a reputation for owning a rubbery stomach that can push limits. A lot of guys can chew fast, but Joey Chestnut can hold it down, even when he tastes the acidic bile crawling up the back of his throat.

"Most of us can only work at 80 to 85 percent," said Bob Shoudt, a circuit eater who has befriended Chestnut and once beat him in a lobster-eating contest. "But Joey can push himself at 90 to 95 percent. That's rare. What's more rare is his work ethic."

Chestnut may have stumbled into competitive eating, but until he found it, he hadn't dedicated himself so completely to any other interest. In the books and documentaries about competitive eating, most of which Chestnut says he has not read or viewed, a common narrative arises: the need for a motive. Why, after all, would adults in an industrialized nation race one another to eat beyond their means?

"For most of these guys," said Shea, president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, "it's about the attention. Look, you're an average guy yesterday and today -- you're a rock star. You don't have to spend the early years of your life training like a Lance Armstrong, either. You can be like Joey -- a good, sweet kid -- who just happens to have a great talent.

"But I don't see the need for attention in Joey," Shea added. "He honestly looks unflappable, unaware of the crowd."

"When I get on stage," Chestnut said, "there is no better feeling than knowing I'm giving it my 100 percent, and the person next to me, he's giving it his all ... but it's nowhere close to mine."

Carmen, Chestnut's sister, has watched her once quiet brother grow up from a trumpet-toting kid to a dedicated craftsman.

"It's tough finding your identity in a big family," she said. "But now he shows a determination I didn't know he had the first 20 years of his life. He's more dedicated to it, and works harder at it than he ever did homework or band."

The payoff will come July 4. Shea is licking his chops for a Chestnut-Kobayashi duel. A patriotic air has descended on the competition, as an American has not held the title for half a decade. Last year, the second-place winner was 14 dogs behind Kobyashi.

"The pressure on Joey will be enormous," Shea said, delighting in his own words. "It'll be a battle of the ages, these two titans going up against each other. These two, Joey and Kobayashi, stand on Olympian heights like no two other eaters do."

Shea paused again to savor the fantasy.

"If Joey Chestnut wins at Nathan's," he said, "there will be tears of joy."

Inside his apartment, tears of dedication welled in the corners of Joey Chestnut's eyes. Beads of sweat poured down his face. He was putting roughly eight pounds of pork and 12,000 calories into his gut -- in less than 10 minutes. He knew the price he'd pay: An hour or two of extreme lethargy, and a day without an appetite.

At hot dog number 35, Chestnut's face is red as tomato sauce. The veins in his forehead bulge out, his cheeks balloon like Louis Armstrong. As he chews, globs of bread and water dribble out from the corners of his mouth.

The ballad from "Rocky" swells once more on the CD loop.

But suddenly, Joey Chestnut stops.

Yates: "What, you gotta burp? That's OK, man, let it go."

Chestnut puts a hand over his lip. His neck jerks, his face gets redder. He clamps down on his mouth, closes his eyes hard and shakes his head "no."

"Sneeze?" Yates asks.

Snot shoots out both of Chestnut's nostrils while he keeps one hand over his mouth.

"That's OK," Yates encourages. "Now chew it down, c'mon now, this is nothing, chew it down."

The Rocky theme -- the section full of blaring trumpets! -- inspires Chestnut.

He removes his hand and reaches for water, his body convulsing at each gulp.

"Drink that water," Yates says. "Now take 'em down."

Again, Chestnut reaches for the remaining dogs and lunges at them as he chews, forcing his head down on them, chewing.

Yates pounds the kitchen counter top in excitement.

"There you go, there you go! You got this, you got this! It's easy."

Chestnut labors through the final five hot dogs. Bite, bite ... swallow. Bite, bite ... swallow.

His neck is noticeably thicker, his esophagus enlarged as a sewer pipe.

Chestnut takes his last gnaw and glances at the microwave clock.

Time: 40 hot dogs in 9 minutes, 28 seconds.

It's well off a record-setting pace. In fact, even for a dry run, it's much slower than he'd anticipated. Chestnut is quiet, licking the food from his teeth.

Yates gets quiet, too, in simpatico consolation.

Chestnut wipes the sweat pouring off his face. The dogs went down more difficult than usual, he says. His stomach was fine, but his jaws were sore and slow.

For the next two minutes Chestnut stays intense and quiet, mentally reviewing his performance. He stands in a puddle of his debris: water, hot dog bits, wet buns.

"Dammit," he says, then lets out a polite burp.


[/ QUOTE ]

Pulitzer prize worthy. 13 days away, baby!!!

[turnipmonster]

how do these ppl stay thin?