Erudite sports aficionado that I am, I anticipate each Fourth of July with bated breath. It is on this day, of course, that masticular superheroes from around the world converge at Coney Island to participate in the greatest annual athletic event of all time: Nathan's Famous Competitive Hot Dog Eating Contest.

Every year promises a competition full of suspense, but this year's was especially dramatic. As was reported by PointBlank, things looked grim early on for six-time winner and possible demi-god Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi: stricken with jaw arthritis a mere week into training, he was all but helpless to watch as young up-and-comer rookie Joey "Jaws" Chestnut crushed his world record at the U.S. Southwest Regionals just a few short months after eking out a win at their last close race, the Krystal Burger Square-Off. Despite his handicap and formidable competition, however, Kobayashi refused to go down without a fight. He underwent everything from chiropractic treatment to wisdom tooth extraction in an attempt to pull himself up by the bootstraps for a real battle, and a real battle it was -- with even third-place Pat Bertoletti over a dozen sausages behind, the rest of the competition seemed to melt away. On that stage, there was naught but Chestnut, Kobayashi, and the hot dogs uneaten between them.

Many a record was broken that day. Kobayashi beat his former personal best, as did Chestnut. Sadly, there could be but one winner, and in a bittersweet victory Chestnut ended Kobayashi's reign of gastronomical terror, vacuuming sixty-six hot dogs into his stomach within twelve minutes in order to restore the title and the Mustard Yellow Belt to the official land of overeating. Home at last.

Pretty exciting stuff, no? I should think so. The day after its thrilling conclusion, however, sports writer Mark Bradley ran a column in Atlanta Journal Constitution, delineating some thoughts on the validity of Coney Island's finest competition that really chapped my hide:

A guy ate 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes and was declared world champion on ESPN on the Fourth. ESPN is or, more precisely, was a network devoted to sports. This guys feat, if you want to call it that, was chronicled breathlessly by the wire services and featured prominently on the major sports Web sites. Every now and then we have the debate over whether figure skating is a real sport. Well, alongside renowned gorger Joey Chesnut [sic], Michelle Kwan is Jim Thorpe.

So right off the bat it's not even fair. Say whatever you want about the inherent froufrou-ocity of figure skating, but it takes some serious muscle and agility the likes of which most of us will never attain. But hey, way to go insulting an Olympic athlete to further your argument. Anyway, the gist of Bradley's column is this:

Eating is not a sport. Poker is not a sport. A spelling bee is not a sport. Theyre competitions, yes, but they involve nothing athletic. Theyre simply programming for the great beast Television, and for reasons unclear some among us feel compelled to watch this stuff.

Now, as J.N. Darby Elementary School's 1993 Spelling Bee Champion, I must admit I'm a little incensed at his bringing yet another area of my expertise into this, but that is neither here nor there. What is here is the question raised: is competitive eating really a sport? Personally, I fail to see how this is even a question, but I suppose it depends on your definition of the word "sport." I'll take the dictionary's definition.

sport [spawrt, spohrt]
noun
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

All right. Just by looking at the rosters, it's pretty clear just how competitive an eating competition can be, so the semantics problem clearly lies within whether or not this is an "athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess."

To me, months of training sounds an awful lot like athletics. Just as baseball players hit the pre-season bull pen, so do competitive eaters hit the gym in between kitchen runs. There's a reason most competitive eaters are ridiculously thinner than the massive amounts of snacks they pack away would imply, and it's called calculated technique and hardcore training.

For serious hot dog eaters, technique can be pivotal. Kobayashi swears by the "Solomon approach" -- he breaks his wieners and buns in half before shoving them mouthward. "It saves me half the chewing effort," Kobayashi said.

Kobayashi, who weighs 70 kg, says competitive eating requires a special brand of bodybuilding.

"You have to gradually build up your gut by eating larger and larger amounts of food, and then be sure to work it all off so body fat doesn't put a squeeze on the expansion of your stomach in competition," he said. "I start my regime about two months before a big competition."

Kobayashi does, admittedly, have a physical condition which aids him in his endeavors: his stomach is seated below his rib cage, allowing it to expand a whole lot more than most people. You might say, "A-ha! So, his talent is just a biological fluke that has nothing to do with training!" But that is where you would be wrong. Such a condition is little different from height in basketball or bulk in football, and without training to harness its power, it is essentially worthless. All it really means is that Kobayashi is the Yao Ming of competitive eating. That's what I call "physical prowess."

Which brings us back to the original definition. In short, yes, competitive eating is most definitely a sport. Though it may not require the same brute strength as other sports, it does require insane amounts of dedication and hard work. Also, it is fun, and also it is awesome. Mark Bradley, sports columnist, can keep his Michael Jordans and Joe Montanas in all their mainstream glory; my sports heroes eat glory for breakfast.

On the Fourth of July, _DictionaryGirl_ ate fried rattlesnake, fried jalapeños, steak fries, elote con crema, fried Pepsi, a fried chicken Krispy Kreme sandwich, a handful of penny candy, and about a gallon of soda. All before dinner. She still has a long way to go. She would also like to add that, while still absolutely a sport, competitive eating is pretty much the geekiest sport ever. Which is why this article belongs in the Geek section. Natch.

farva

Portland, OR

November 2005

JUL 12, 2007 04:40 AM

I have seen video of the tusnami training. If that is not a sport, I will eat my hat.

/loves Kobayashi
/loves hotdogs
/loves a good DictionaryGirl article at 4:40AM

quietlythere

USA

June 2004

JUL 12, 2007 04:43 AM

Haha, great write up

Margot_Dent

Los Angeles, CA

February 2004

JUL 12, 2007 05:20 AM

a wonderful article about something i already found fascinating. great job as always, _DG_.

Omega_Blue

Antelope, CA

June 2007

JUL 12, 2007 06:54 AM

I suppose it could be considered a sport, but what is tested is really the limits of the human stomach, and I wonder will they one day reach that limit, perhaps on TV and kill over??? What would be such a limit? 75 hot dogs? 80??? Imagine the headline: " Joey Chestnut has died, he died when he ate his 81st hot dog of a perforated stomach, he was 23 years old"...