by Ryan Nerz
Steve Keiner briefly restored American predominance in 1999, dropping twenty and a quarter and beating Nakajima, but his victory sparked controversy. Runner-up “Hungry” Charles Hardy, who tied for second with twenty, complained that Keiner had started eating a fraction of a second before the starting gun was fired. George Shea admitted that video footage showed Keiner had jumped the gun, but ruled that replays weren’t allowed.
In 2000, the Japanese swept first, second, and third, led by the hundred-pound Kazutoyo “the Rabbit” Arai, who set a new world record with twenty-five and one-eighth dogs and buns. Second place went to Misao Fujita, a pudgy banana-eating champ, and the legendary female meat-bun-eating champ Takako Akasaka took third. The Japanese Sweep, as it has become known, was such a devastating emasculation of the American eaters that journalists and fans could only cling to the hope that things could only get better.
No such luck. The most pivotal event in modern competitive-eating history occurred on July 4, 2001. On that day, twenty-three-year old Takeru “the Tsunami” Kobayashi of Nagano, Japan, ate fifty hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes, doubling Arai’s record and sending shock waves through the American competitive-eating community. It’s almost impossible to grasp the magnitude of this athletic feat. It eclipses even the most staggering of pro sports records, from Chamberlain’s hundred-point game, Gretzky’s ninety-two goals in a season, and Oscar Robertson’s average of a triple-double over an entire season. By the eight-minute mark, most of Kobayashi’s American rivals had stopped chewing to gawk at eating greatness in action. Never before had they seen such lupine voracity. Never before had they seen the Solomon Method, which involved breaking each dog and bun in half before eating them. Fifty dogs and buns? Never before had they imagined the bar could be set so impossibly high.
Kobayashi’s triumphant victory in 2001 signaled the dawn of a new era in competitive eating. What had long been considered a publicity-driven sideshow now looked more like a sport. As Kobayashi continued to rack up perennial victories over the next four years, the circuit blossomed. The 2005 season will include over one hundred contests and nearly $200,000 in prize money. Extensive media coverage, including ESPN coverage of the Nathan’s contest and the Alka-Seltzer U.S. Open of Competitive Eating (a thirty-two-eater single elimination tournament), will lead to over eight hundred million IFOCE media impressions in 2005. Most significantly, competitive eating has become part of American culture. While ten years ago few people had heard of it, these days, when the term “competitive eating” comes up, even the least tuned-in media consumers often say, “You mean like that little Asian guy that eats the hot dogs?”
That little guy’s name is Kobayashi, and no American has ever beaten him. The only glimmer of mortality he has shown, in fact, was on July 4, 2002, when some hot dog slush allegedly spurted through his nose after the buzzer at the Nathan’s contest. IFOCE commissioner Mike DeVito, however, ruled that none hit the table, and everyone agreed that it would have been a cheap concession of defeat. So the question still weighs heavily on the minds of the American gurgitators: When will the Mustard Yellow International Belt return to American shores, and who will be the champion to don it?
Many experts place our nation’s competitive eating hopes on the narrow shoulders of Sonya Thomas. Rising stars such as Tim “Eater X” Janus and Joey Chestnut, a college student and waffle-eating champ from San Jose, California, also seem poised to carry the torch. But thanks to the egalitarian spirit of competitive eating, the next great American champ could be an anonymous nobody somewhere out there decimating an all-you-can-eat buffet. “There could be a great eater just sleeping out in Milwaukee that we don’t even know about,” Rich Shea says. His brother George agrees. “There are kids out there with innate talent. They may be sitting down to dinner right now. It’s a magic that they don’t understand. There is a Mozart of competitive eating who is yet to reveal himself.”
6
The Mardi Gras Maneuver
No one’s eaten crawfish jambalaya competitively yet. This is a world premiere at Lulu’s, and you don’t know what’s gonna happen.
—Crazy Legs Conti, talking to a Reuters reporter
before the Jambalaya Eating Championship
FEBRUARY 24, 2004
To maximize press coverage, Al Chadsey, the organizer of the Jambalaya Eating Championship at Lulu’s Club Mardi Gras in Washington, D.C, has chosen a unique format for the contest. Instead of staging one timed contest, Al and Dave Baer have decided to hold two one-minute qualifying rounds during the day, to determine the field of eaters for the championship ten-minute event that night. Because of this labor-intensive format, Dave has brought me along to help with the details.
The details, I soon discover, involve orchestrating the preparation of copious amounts of crawfish jambalaya. I spend the hour before the contest in the kitchen, inappropriately dressed in a suit and tie, weighing one-pound bowls of jambalaya and jabbering with a jovial chef from France.
As I bring out the last tray of jambalaya, I’m confronted by none other than Dale Boone. Wearing his trademark overalls over an Atlanta Falcons jersey, but without the coonskin cap to cover his bald pate, Dale has a glimmer in his eyes. He says he wants to meet the chef. I lead him to the kitchen, only to realize Dale’s not interested in making friends. Instead, he grabs a serving spoon the size of a garden tool and asks to borrow it.
As we walk from the kitchen, Dale stops me for a powwow. This is his chance to beat Sonya Thomas, he says, shaking the spoon for emphasis. He’s a sprinter; he can take Sonya in a one-minute contest. The spoon is integral to this scheme, his means to a glorious upset. For some reason, this plan strikes me as perfectly reasonable. No matter that it’s just a one-minute qualifier, or that winning it would result in neither prize money nor much lasting prestige on the circuit. I give Dale the go-ahead. Why sabotage such a simple dream?
One thing I appreciate about Dale is that he is one of the few eaters who has fully embraced the WWF element of character development. The cowbell, the yee-haws, the smack talk—they make the emcee’s job easier and add to the overall entertainment product. I like that he’s willing to exploit regional loyalties to curry favor with the crowd, and that he’s willing, on occasion, to play the villain and taunt the crowd. He might be bit of a loose cannon, but I enjoy the Dale Boone Show. If this show includes the use of an oversized spoon, so be it.
We return to the stage at the front of the bar, where the competitive-eating tables are set up. It’s four in the afternoon on a Tuesday in late February, but it’s Fat Tuesday of Mardi Gras fame, so already the place is beginning to fill up with office runaways and college kids wearing beaded necklaces. There are a handful of reporters and cameramen, but in general, it’s a low-key affair. It is a testament to how polarized events on the circuit are that just three weeks ago, twenty thousand screaming fans were cheering Sonya Thomas to a Wing Bowl victory at Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center, and now she’s doing a one-minute qualifier in a bar. So goes life on the circuit.
Sonya Thomas displays her preternatural cheek capacity en route to setting the new world record of nine pounds of crawfish jambalaya in ten minutes. (Courtesy of Matt Roberts/IFOCE)
I start setting up the competition—three bowls of jambalaya and a glass of water per contestant. Dave Baer warms up the audience. “We are setting up the jambalaya, a food that will require both dexterity and capacity. Tonight, another chapter in the illustrious blossoming history of Sonya Thomas will be written.”
The eaters mill around, stretching and talking to each other. Sonya smiles radiantly, her silky black hair back in a ponytail, intense eyes highlighted by lavender eye shadow, clad in jeans, platform shoes, and a silkscreen T-shirt that reads SONYA THOMAS—THE BLACK WIDOW OF THE IFOCE. Stu Birdie, a fringe member and moderately acclaimed fan/eater on the circuit, is still wearing his Southwest Airlines uniform, having just come from work. Crazy Legs Conti is decked out in his standard outfit, a personalized version of the modern dan
dy: a tall black top hat with red dreadlocks peeking out, a blue, ruffled tuxedo shirt, and the ever-present shorts. A resident of New York City’s East Village, Crazy Legs’ dashing getup seems an apt representation of his nongurgitating résumé. He has worked as a nude model, a sperm donor, a filmmaker, a line cook, and a window washer.
Dave calls out the locals first, including Eddie DiSabatino, a big-boned government contractor named Laurie Randall, and a small, intense character known as Frank “the Liz” Lizbinski. Then he announces Crazy Legs. “A Johns Hopkins University graduate, a writer, and a competitive eater…he is the lumberjack-breakfast-eating champ and the former oyster-eating champion, a title he hopes to regain at the French Quarter Festival in three weeks. He is the reigning sourdough-pancake-eating champion with four pounds of pancakes in eight minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, he is Crazy…Legs…Conti!” The crowd, now lining the bar’s New Orleans-esque staircase and balcony, shout out their approval. One fan, however, shouts a slightly more existential response: “Why? Why?”
“This next eater really needs no introduction,” Dave says. “Folks, you’ve heard the stories, the ups and downs. If there is a John Daly of the competitive-eating circuit, his name is Dale Boone.” Dale rings not one but two cowbells and mugs directly into the Reuters camera. “I’m comin’ at you, Black Widow. I’m comin’ atcha!” Dave starts to rattle off Dale’s stats, but soon gives up and hands Dale the mic, knowing his penchant for addressing the crowd. Dale grabs it and looks directly at Sonya. “You are about to receive an American buttwhoopin’ like you’ve never seen! Black Widow, your day has come, because the big bear is out of hibernation!”
Sonya just laughs, not unnerved in the slightest.
“Save it for the table, Dale,” Dave says, taking back the microphone.
“Steroids!” a glassy-eyed fan yells out, pointing at Dale. “That’s tampering, right there! Him and Barry Bonds.”
“Ladies and gentleman, our final eater, and the one you have come here today to see, making her debut in her adopted hometown of Washington, D.C.…” As Dave starts reading off Sonya’s accolades, the loud shouts from the increasingly lubricated crowd nearly drown out his voice. With the combination of her impossibly slight stature, beauty, underestimated-gender status, and unshakable friendliness, Sonya is, per usual, the overwhelming crowd favorite.
As she walks to her space at the center of the table, I notice Sonya is carrying her own, slightly oversized spoon. She walks past Dale, and he gestures to her chair in a mock-gentlemanly manner. When she sits down, Dale picks a smaller spoon off the table and offers it to Sonya. “Need this?” “Maybe,” Sonya answers, putting it back down on the table. Then, with a dramatic flourish, Dale takes the small spoon provided to him, shows it to the crowd, and drops it contemptuously on the table. They have no idea what this means.
As Dave counts down from ten, Dale pulls out the giant serving spoon from beneath the flap in his overalls and smacks it three times against the table. At this point, a vague dread creeps over me. This spoon issue is taking on a life of its own, as things sometimes will with Dale Boone.
When the countdown ends, Dale starts shoveling mounds of jambalaya into his mouth with aggressive, almost superhuman strokes. “Dale Boone is muscling his way through his first bowl with a mammoth-sized spoon,” says Dave. “Sonya Thomas is pacing herself. Clearly the overall championship is more important to her than this one-minute qualifying event. Crazy Legs Conti holding his own, rifling down the jambalaya.”
In no time, the crowd is helping Dave count down the final seconds. As Dave calls out, “Stop eating!” Dale pushes the last bit of rice into his mouth and pounds the table. He stands over Sonya, staring down at the back of her head, his hands raised victoriously as if to say, “I own you.” Looking composed, Dale chews casually and paces the back of the stage, his stomach puffed with pride. In the rafters, the fans start chanting, “Son-ya! Son-ya! Son-ya!”
But wait. It looks as if maybe Dale has beaten Sonya. Of course, it’s immaterial in a one-minute qualifier in which the top five make the cut, but still. I sigh, happy to see the contest come to an uneventful close. But my relief is premature. A young woman in the crowd spots it first. She points at Dale and shrieks as if she’s witnessed an assassination. “Ahh! He’s barfing!” Oh, no. I look at Dale. He has his hands over his mouth. Then he spits into his hand and throws it over his shoulder, as if that might conceal it. He makes a few panicky hand gestures, then reaches out to Crazy Legs for help. Crazy Legs tries to half-support him without getting too close to the volcano. “Help!” Dale says, gesturing to the EMT.
“This is no longer fun,” someone in the crowd calls out, laughing.
On the circuit, it is understood that if you are about to suffer a reversal, you get away from the table, away from the cameras and the fans. Having lost all presence of mind, Dale forgets this maxim. He regurgitates twice on the table, then asks again for the EMT. The EMT, a frail college student less than half Dale’s size who’s been off in the corner joking with his buddies, hurries to the stage. Meanwhile, Crazy Legs, always nimble-minded, walks over to block the vision of the Reuters camera. I just stand there, mouth agape, clueless and numb. “Ready?” the EMT asks, his arms barely fitting around the circumference of Dale’s belly. “Yeah,” Dale says. After the first Heimlich maneuver, which dislodges no visible jambalaya, Dale asks for another.
“Ladies and gentleman,” Dave announces, “Dale has requested a second Heimlich, just to fully clear the pipe.”
After the second Heimlich, which again has no visible effect, Dale simmers down and Lulu’s Club Mardi Gras emits a collective sigh of relief. Without hesitation, Dave tells Dale he’s disqualified.
“Why?” Dale asks.
“You know why.”
Afterward, Dave tells me we’ve just witnessed the first-ever Heimlich on the IFOCE circuit—not exactly the kind of competitive-eating history I want to be associated with. “That huge spoon didn’t help anything,” Dave says. I confess that I had a hand in Dale’s procurement of the spoon, and Dave scolds me for my negligence. I deserve it. I feel like a moron and vow to never be nonchalant about matters of safety again.
Yet, I feel slightly indignant because, in my opinion, the Heimlich was unnecessary. Why? Because it’s common knowledge that if you can ask for the Heimlich, then you don’t need it because your windpipe isn’t actually clogged. I know this from experience, having choked on a poorly chewed piece of steak as a kid. (After I frantically pounded on the table, my father saved me with a swift and confidently executed Heimlich maneuver.)
Now, this isn’t to say that Dale wasn’t feeling gastrointestinal discomfort. Shoveling down two pounds of spicy, rice-filled jambalaya in a minute almost guarantees choking or intense heartburn or something. But what if Dale had really choked? Would that skinny EMT have been up to the task? If something serious had happened to Dale, would I have been partially liable? It’s a daunting possibility, one I’d rather not focus on. I am forced to recognize that competitive eating is potentially dangerous, that one instance of choking could result not only in tragedy, but in the demise of competitive eating as we know it. It is a fear shared by many in the competitive-eating community, and Dale’s mishap has driven the point home in a tangible way. Perhaps it’s no longer responsible for me to think of this job as the fulfillment of my long-awaited dream—that of getting paid to play.
7
Ed Krachie and the Belt of Fat Theory
I’m surprised there aren’t more fat people in it. My vision of an eating contest is some Homer Simpson-type guy just plowing through.
—Spectator John Lisi, after witnessing the
2003 Stagg Chili-Eating Contest
After Sonya Thomas won the final round of the Jambalaya Eating Championship by eating a staggering nine pounds in ten minutes—a 10 percent weight gain—a reporter asked me a question I would soon become very accustomed to answering: How can such a tiny person eat so much?
It�
�s a question that has been plaguing American competitive eaters for nearly a decade, ever since the 135-pound Hirofumi Nakajima beat a man three times his size in hot dogs in December of 1996. With the subsequent appearance of Kazutoyo Arai, Takeru Kobayashi, and Sonya Thomas, the question resonates even louder now, at the dawn of the new millennium. The logic we have always taken for granted—that fat people can eat more than skinny people—can officially be stricken from the scientific record. But why…why?
In November 2003, Popular Science finally addressed the question, in an article that shocked scientists and competitive eaters worldwide. Though it did not fully account for the dominance of smaller eaters in the sport of competitive eating, the theory shed some light on clear physiological advantage. Perhaps most stunning about this revolutionary theory was that it was not posited by some ambitious grad student, or by a doctor from Harvard Med, but by a former American hot-dog-eating champion from Queens.
To grasp the origins of the Belt of Fat Theory, one must examine the life and eating career of its creator, Ed Krachie. In the documentary Red, White, and Yellow, Krachie’s mother claims that he was an eating prodigy from day one: In kindergarten, he regularly polished off an entire box of cereal and a couple of bananas at breakfast. If ever there was a natural on the American competitive-eating circuit, it was Ed “the Animal” Krachie.
Krachie grew up in Maspeth, Queens, where he attended Grover Cleveland High School. After graduation, he stayed in Maspeth and tried to kick-start a career. He briefly attended college and was considering a life in law enforcement like his dad, but could never quite commit. To make some cash while he got his bearings, Ed took a job repossessing cars in some of New York’s shadier neighborhoods. Ed’s intimidating physique—he’s six feet seven inches and well over three hundred pounds—combined with his boss’s “psycho ex-cop” mentality was a recipe for success in the repo business. They ran a minimonopoly casing out neighborhoods where other repo guys feared to tread.