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San Jose resident and competitive eater extraordinaire Joey Chestnut claimed victory again Wednesday at the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York, downing 74 franks in 10 minutes for a new world record.
For the 11th time in 12 years, Chestnut ate more hot dogs and their buns than any other competitor, beating second-place finisher Carmen Cincotti, who turned 26 the day of the Fourth of July competition, by 10 franks.
“I didn’t let the heat bother me or the humidity,” Chestnut said Wednesday afternoon after the contest from his hotel room where he’d just finished taking a cool shower.
“I was expecting to be right about there,” he said of eating 74 franks, admitting he “got a bit lazy at the end.”
But the victory didn’t come easily. At one point, Chestnut said, a dog got lodged in his throat.
“I stayed calm,” he said. “I just kept going.”
And originally, the counters wrongly said Chestnut ate 64 hot dogs, apparently unaware from the beginning that he was pulling from two plates at once. But a review eventually showed the final tally was 74.
The mixup distracted Chestnut while he was eating, he said, but “it all worked out in the end.”
“I’m sure they’ll make changes next year to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The 34-year-old former construction manager turned full-time competitive eater said he prepared in the days leading up to the contest by fasting — subsisting Tuesday on water with lemon, amino acids and a few caramels.
Chestnut took advantage of a heat wave in San Jose a couple of weeks ago to practice eating in the hot temperatures that are synonymous with East Coast summers, even if he couldn’t replicate the stickiness.
He’d been in New York since last Thursday, he said, acclimating to the oppressing humidity.
That appeared to pay off Wednesday, as Chestnut outpaced his 20 challengers in the competition’s 102nd year.
As crowds donning hot dog hats packed Coney Island, Chestnut alternated between shoving two hot dogs and two buns dunked in water to soften them up into his mouth for the duration of the competition, getting into a steady rhythm during the 10-minute endurance test.
“If I’m going to get up on stage to eat hot dogs,” Chestnut told ESPN, which broadcast the competition, “I’m not going to do it to get third or fourth.”
Hot dogs aren’t the only food the professional eater is known for eating in massive quantities. According to Major League Eating, the body that oversees professional eating contests, Chestnut once ate nearly 13 pounds of deep-fried asparagus in 10 minutes and 55 glazed donuts in the same amount of time. In 2013, he inhaled 141 hard-boiled eggs in eight minutes.
After Chestnut beat Takeru Kobayashi in 2007 for the title of top dog, winning the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt, he remained undefeated for eight straight years. His one and only loss came in 2015 at the hands of fellow San Jose resident Matt Stonie, but Chestnut reclaimed victory in 2016 and has maintained champion status since.
Stonie placed outside the top three Wednesday but promised in a tweet to push to do better next year.
In the women’s competition, Miki Sudo defended her title, becoming just the third competitor to win five titles and downing 37 franks in 10 minutes.
Both Chestnut and Sudo will take home a $10,000 first-place prize.
But first, Chestnut said, he plans to rest a bit before making the trip back to San Jose.
“I’m going to take a nap,” he said just after 5 p.m. in New York. “I should be good by around 11 p.m.”
