It was the allure of a free hotel room in Reno, Nev., that kick-started Joey Chestnut’s competitive-eating career. Chestnut’s younger brother, who was interested in the sport, entered Chestnut in a lobster-eating contest in Reno in April 2005. “He knew I was the biggest eater in the family,” says 24-year-old Chestnut, who had never eaten lobster before his competitive debut.
Chestnut didn’t win – he placed third, eating 2.5 pounds of lobster – but he did get hooked on the competition. “It was ridiculous,” he says. “I never had anybody tell me to keep eating. It was a weird feeling. I enjoyed the competitive aspect but I really didn’t like the lobster.”
Today, Chestnut holds more than a dozen world records. In 2007, he won Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, N.Y., by downing 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes, breaking a record previously held by Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi. Kobayashi had won the contest for the past six years.
Chestnut also broke the “100 Krystals in eight minutes” barrier by surpassing the previous world record of 97 Krystals, held by Kobayashi. Chestnut devoured 103 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes to win the Krystal Square Off IV World Hamburger Eating Championship in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“With his 103 Krystals, Joey reaffirmed his position as the greatest athlete in the world right now,” says Richard Shea, president of Major League Eating, the governing body of all stomach-centric sports. “If he keeps at this pace, he’ll soon eclipse Kobayashi as the greatest eater to have ever lived.”
Presented by The Krystal Company, the Krystal Square Off is one of the two major events in the sport of competitive eating and the only world hamburger-eating championship sanctioned by Major League Eating (formerly the International Federation of Competitive Eating, or IFOCE). For his win, Chestnut walked away with $10,000 as well as the coveted Krystal Square Off Champion’s Belt and Trophy made of crystal.
Competitive eating is a growing phenomenon in the United States. More than 6,000 people watched Chestnut walk off with the Krystal championship. The event was also broadcast on ESPN.
“Back in 1997, when my brother, George, and I started the International Federation of Competitive Eating, we were promoting 15 contests,” Shea says. “In 2007 we were doing 90 contests, a couple of shows on ESPN and four hours of shows on SPIKE television with around half-a-million dollars in prize money. The fan base and the sport have grown exponentially.”
While it may be new to television viewers, the sport of competitive eating has been around in one shape or another since man began to eat. “I would argue that it’s as fundamental as running and jumping,” Shea says. “Many eating contests were held at festivals that mark the harvest. They wanted to show how much they could eat.”
Krystal has been hosting eating contests since it opened its doors in 1932. The company’s second customer, Roy Ward, claimed he could eat twice as many of the small iconic hamburgers as French Jenkins, the chain’s first customer. Ward set the first record by eating 12 Krystals.
Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest has been held each year since 1916, according to archives. Last year, the event drew almost 50,000 spectators.
“There are people who are big fans of competitive eating,” Shea says. “They make a pilgrimage like they do for Mardi Gras and New Year’s Eve in New York. They center their trips around the events. The event at Nathan’s is now part of the Fourth of July holiday.”
Chestnut, who was the IFOCE 2005 Rookie of the Year, has won contests eating everything from deep-fried asparagus – in 2007 he ate 8.6 pounds of the vegetable in 10 minutes – to Buffalo chicken wings – he downed 7.5 pounds in 12 minutes, also in 2007.
Over the years, Chestnut, who weighs in at 230 pounds, has learned how to push his body to accept tremendous amounts of food. Today, he puts in weeks of training. “I try to build up a tolerance,” he explains. “I do practice contests so I know where I am at with my body. The last week before a contest, I will go on a little bit of a fast.”
Chestnut doesn’t eat any solid food on contest day. After a contest, he skips solid food for a couple of days. “A lot of it is knowing my body and being familiar with the food in the contest,” he says. “I talk to a lot of people who push their bodies like marathon runners. When they get tired, their bodies are used to it so I get my body used to feeling that full and ignoring it.”
Chestnut accredits his wins in part to breathing and muscle control. “It’s important to be healthy,” he says. “I have to be able to control my breathing while I’m swallowing. There are times in the contest where I will feel out of breath. I have to be able to get into a good rhythm.”
Thirty-one-year-old Timothy Janus, known as Eater X, practices before events by eating the food featured in the contest. “I’ll buy it and figure out the fastest way to eat it,” he says. “The day of the event I won’t eat a lot. The day before the event I don’t eat meat because it takes longer to digest.”
Janus, the 2004 IFOCE Rookie of the Year, is known by fans for the mask that he paints on his face before events. “I did that just to have fun,” he says. “I kept doing it and people remembered it.”
In 2007, the 165-pound contender from New York won the Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill contest by eating 11.81 pounds of burritos in 10 minutes. He also won the NARUTO: Clash of Ninja Revolution for Nintendo Wii in October by eating 10.5 pounds of Ramen Noodles in eight minutes.
Both competitors admit that contestants can gain weight if they don’t watch what they eat during the year. “You definitely gain a temporary mass of food and water,” Janus says. “But that will disappear in a day.”
Janus’ biggest weight gain came after a grits-eating contest. “I gained 20 pounds after 10 minutes of eating 20 pounds of grits and drinking water,” he says.
As one of the top contenders in competitive eating, Janus would like to see the sport grow to greater heights. “It’s very compartmentalized,” he says. “We need to permeate the consciousness of America. We’ve grown a whole lot but we still have room to grow.”
The prize money that can be won by stuffing down food at a frantic pace is substantial. Chestnut, for example, has won about $100,000 during a two-year period. “If you look at the top eater in America, he’s getting about $60,000 for a year. Only the very elite can live off of just what they win. Every one of us has a job, just to be safe,” says Janus, who is a day trader and moonlights at a pizzeria to learn the business. “You never know if you will lose a few.”
Sixty-three-year-old Richard LeFevre of Henderson, Nev., has scaled back the number of competitions he enters. LeFevre and his wife, Carlene, started winning contests in 1985. The couple had heard that they could get their dinner free if they ate a 72-ounce steak dinner in less than 60 minutes at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. “We thought it would be fun to try that,” LeFevre says. “We did it with ease and we’ve been doing it every year since.”
The couple were flown to Amarillo by Ripley’s Believe It or Not after winning 16 free dinners. “We were the only married couple that had done that,” LeFevre says. The two repeated their win on the “Donny & Marie Show” in 2000 when they ate two 72-ounce dinners in 58 minutes.
During his career with the IFOCE, LeFevre has won a number of contests, including a pickled-jalapeno contest at the State Fair of Texas in 2006 when he downed 247 pickled jalapeno peppers in eight minutes. “That was grueling,” he recalls. “It was very tough. The first time I ate jalapenos during a contest I got sick after 11 minutes of eating them and drinking chocolate milk.”
His favorite record: eating five pounds of birthday cake at the TripRewards First Birthday in May 2005. LeFevre downed the cake in 11 minutes, 26 seconds. “I won a million TripRewards points,” he says. “I’m able to do a lot of free traveling with that. It’s the best prize that I’ve won and the cake was delicious.”
LeFevre concedes that the competition has gotten more difficult in recent years. He participated in only about 15 contests last year. “I won’t spend a lot of money to travel if I don’t think I will get it back in winnings,” he says. “The competition has gotten harder. The younger guys who train have brought up the numbers.”
Chestnut, who works at a construction company as a project engineer, isn’t sure if anyone will challenge his Nathan’s record at the annual hot-dog-eating contest this Fourth of July. “That contest took a lot of energy. It took me so long to get ready for it,” he says. “The only way I’ll defend it is if somebody is trying to break my record.”
The fresh-faced competitor is bothered by the fact that some people don’t consider competitive eating to be a sport. “I have to,” he says, “because I push my body so hard. I realize with training the gains that I could make. It’s something I like to do. It’s just a lot of fun.”
