This year's Hotdog Eating Contest was a close call. I was in the crowd at Coney Island on July 4th to witness the great Kobayashi set a new world record - 53 and 3/4 hotdogs in 12 minutes! Joey Chestnut, a rookie to the competitive eating circuit, finished slightly behind with 52 hotdogs.
Although I really enjoy the Hotdog Eating Contest, I didn't like how the event became so commercialized and how the host kept drag the event on and on for hours (the actual contest only took 12 minutes). 4th of July was a hot and humid day, many of the crowd felt dehydrated after 2 hours standing directly under the sun on the street of Coney Island, waiting for the "show" to start. The host of the contest squeezed in gibberish announcements, prolonged contestant-introductions, and boring musical performers (Eric Booker's rap performance was so bad we thought it was his strategy to affect other contestants' appetite). Later, ESPN wanted them to re-do the introductions for TV, so we had to watch it all over again. And since ESPN broadcasted the event live, there are many commercial breaks, which added to the wait.
Anyway, once the actual "eating" started, the contest quickly became intense. Joey Chestnut was neck-in-neck with Kobayashi, and even took a two-hotdog lead for quite some time. But at the end, the great Kobayashi showed his experience and patience. He charged ahead of Joey's pace after both hit the 40-hotdogs mark, and never looked back.
Next year, I would probably watch this contest on TV, so I don't have to endure the other nonesense that went on.
posted by Chenster @ 9:02 AM
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