It’s the Fourth of July in New York Metropolis, and that may imply just one factor. No, not fireworks, sweaty subway rides and household cookouts. It’s time for the Nathan’s Well-known Scorching Canine Consuming Contest in Coney Island.
The competition has lengthy been a vacation mainstay in New York, and must-see noon TV throughout the nation. However this yr’s occasion, which exams “aggressive eaters” on what number of sizzling canine they will frantically scarf down in 10 minutes, topped a brand new males’s champion for the primary time in virtually a era.
Patrick Bertoletti, 26, from Chicago, snagged the lads’s title — or, within the parlance of Coney Island, the Mustard Belt — by consuming 58 sizzling canine in 10 minutes.
He took the title from Joey Chestnut, 40, who received the competitors 16 instances however was disqualified from coming into. Mr. Bertoletti was the ninth-ranked eater earlier than the competitors, in accordance with Main League Consuming, and he bested a number of others rivals who occasion organizers had talked up as Mr. Chestnut’s potential successors.
Regardless of his absence, Mr. Chestnut loomed over Thursday’s proceedings. He was pressured to part ways with the contest final month after he signed an endorsement take care of Unattainable Meals, a rival to Nathan’s that makes vegan sizzling canine.
Many viewers tuned in yr after yr simply to observe Mr. Chestnut undergo a pile of sizzling canine like a wooden chipper. Information of his departure from the competition was met with the form of public anguish one may count on for a major-league baseball participant, not a person who ate 62 sizzling canine in 10 minutes final July 4.
On the girls’s contest on Thursday, Miki Sudo, 38, simply received the that title for the tenth time, besting a bunch of rivals, a few of whom traveled to Coney Island from so far as Japan and South Korea.
She ate 51 sizzling canine in 10 minutes, setting a brand new girls’s file and exceeding her 2023 complete of 39.5 sizzling canine. The second place competitor, Mayoi Ebihara of Japan, ate 37 sizzling canine on Thursday.
After her victory, Ms. Sudo thanked her household and the dental college in Tampa the place she is finding out to be dental hygienist, and mirrored on the pressures of being a mom, a scholar and world well-known sizzling canine eater.
“You are feeling such as you’re juggling,” she mentioned, “You attempt your greatest to stability the whole lot.”
Mr. Shea described Ms. Sudo as a lady whose “soul shines like magnesium set afire in opposition to the darkish mountain of evening.”
In an interview final month, Mr. Shea, a charismatic showman who helped elevate this entire spectacle into the form of occasion that’s coated by The New York Instances, mentioned he was “devastated” by the Chestnut scenario. Even Senator Chuck Schumer, a Brooklyn native, mourned what he called “‘impossibly’ hard-to-swallow information.”
Mr. Shea mentioned Mr. Chestnut’s endorsement deal had left Main League Consuming with no selection however to bar him.
“It could be like again within the day Michael Jordan coming to Nike, who made his Air Jordans, and saying, ‘I’m simply going to rep Adidas too,’” Mr. Shea mentioned. “It simply can’t occur.”
The competitors, held exterior Nathan’s Well-known, the Coney Island stand that spawned a sizzling canine empire, will re-air on ESPN twice on Thursday evening.
On Wednesday, the aspiring champions gathered in Midtown for the competition’s official weigh-in ceremony. (The competition doesn’t separate eaters into weight courses, so it was not clear why anybody wanted to be weighed.)
James Webb, 35, one of many contenders to succeed Mr. Chestnut, mentioned in an interview he started aggressive consuming “as a joke,” and is now a full-time content material creator on social media, the place he posts meals movies.
Mr. Shea described him as “the No. 1 eater within the Southern Hemisphere” and the fifth ranked aggressive eater on the earth. (The Southern Hemisphere holds solely about 10 p.c of the world’s inhabitants.)
Mr. Webb, a former skilled soccer participant from Australia, appeared delighted to be in New York, and mentioned he hoped to sometime have an consuming profession like Mr. Chestnut’s.
“Joey set requirements that every one of us are attempting to beat,” he mentioned. “Joey is just like the Terminator.”
The recent canine consuming contest is the form of absurd public occasion for which New York Metropolis has lengthy been identified. Through the years it has developed its personal lore, canon and epic heroes, of whom Mr. Chestnut was lengthy the king.
In response to outer-borough legend, the competition has been held annually since 1916, when Nathan Handwerker opened a sizzling canine joint on the nook of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island.
However like many legends, this one is generally fantasy. The competition really started within the early Seventies, and in 2010, one in every of its authentic promoters, Mortimer Matz, admitted that he had cooked up the origin story in “Coney Island pitchman fashion.”
In recent times, the occasion has been powered largely by the wiener puns and theatrical patriotism of Mr. Shea, who calls it “a celebration of freedom,” and by the star energy of Mr. Chestnut.
The competition made him well-known, and he in flip grew to become synonymous with the occasion — which suggests his specter loomed over the proceedings this yr. Because the weigh-in ceremony started on Wednesday, Mr. Shea repeated the story of Mr. Chestnut’s departure for the group, earlier than reassuring them that he could be welcome to return to the Coney Island occasion at any time.
Representatives for Mr. Chestnut didn’t reply to a request for touch upon Wednesday.
For individuals who nonetheless wished to observe Mr. Chestnut eat an unsettling variety of sizzling canine on July 4, he was to journey to Fort Bliss, in El Paso, to compete in opposition to troopers in a five-minute sizzling canine consuming contest. The occasion will stream stay on Mr. Chestnut’s YouTube channel at 5 p.m. Jap.
He may even headline a sizzling canine consuming contest on Labor Day that may stream stay on Netflix, together with Takeru Kobayashi, one other former July 4 sizzling canine champion who was ejected from the Coney Island contest in 2010 after a falling out with Main League Consuming.
Mr. Chestnut’s trajectory might have taken him out of the Nathan’s competitors — for now, no less than — however Mr. Webb mentioned on Wednesday that some model of his celeb standing is what everybody within the contest hoped to realize.
That’s the reason they spend the yr coaching, consuming and stretching their stomachs. (His methodology entails utilizing a foam curler on his stomach adopted by a visit to a buffet, he mentioned.)
“We’re all bizarre,” mentioned Mr. Webb, as an individual in a large sizzling canine costume danced close by for TV cameras lined up beneath the Vessel in Hudson Yards. “We’re all bizarre in our method. However we’re hella aggressive and fairly disciplined. And that’s sort of the half individuals don’t see.”
