Finally, on America\u2019s birthday, Japan\u2019s long hold on our greatest sporting event was broken.<\/p>\n
Every 4th<\/sup> of July for the past 92 years, competitors from around the world have come to the corner of Surf and Stillwell in Coney Island, to participate in Nathan\u2019s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.\u00a0 In 2001, Takeru Kobayashi arrived from Japan with an appetite for domination.\u00a0 That year, he downed 50 dogs, nearly doubling the record for feasting on franks. \u00a0He\u2019s gone on to win the event for the past 6 years. \u00a0This guy\u2019s a one man digestive dynasty.\u00a0 He won the Glutton Bowl in 2002; he destroyed the competition at the 2005 Alka-Seltzer US Open; he\u2019s eaten 58 bratwursts in 10 minutes, 17.7 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes, 20 pounds of rice balls in 10 minutes, 97 mini-burgers in 8 minutes, and 41 lobster rolls in 10 minutes. \u00a0He holds every record for chewing, swallowing, ingesting, or downing.\u00a0 He is ranked #1 in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.\u00a0 Go ahead, look it up.<\/p>\n On Independence Day, in front of 30,000 spectators and a ESPN audience of 1.5 million households, \u201cTakeru the Tsunami\u201d stepped up to the table, to deliver perhaps his greatest-ever performance.\u00a0 Beside him, largely ignored, stood little Joey Chestnut – yes, that\u2019s his real name, you couldn\u2019t make that up \u2013 a rising star in the world of gluttony and the second place finisher from 2006.<\/p>\n The buzzer sounded and the gladiators of gurgitation began.\u00a0 Tearing, licking, chewing, swallowing, burping.\u00a0 Dogs wolfed, buns scarfed.\u00a0 Platters emptied, platters refilled.\u00a0 Kobayashi and Chestnut, dog for dog, bun for bun. \u00a0When the final buzzer sounded, the results were so close that the judges had to make a careful recount.\u00a0 When the beef and bread had cleared, the shocking results were announced:\u00a0 For Kobayashi, 63 dogs, destroying his personal record by 10.\u00a0 But for Chestnut, the plucky Californian, a bewildering 66 hot dogs consumed.\u00a0 A new event record and the end of 6 years of Asian domination.<\/p>\n The mustard yellow winner\u2019s belt will soon be removed from the Imperial Palace at Saitama Japan and brought to the United States.\u00a0 For his efforts, Joey \u201cJaws\u201d Chestnut received $10,000 and the thanks of a grateful nation.\u00a0 And perhaps the\u00a0 #1 tour ranking, as determined by the IFCE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finally, on America\u2019s birthday, Japan\u2019s long hold on our greatest sporting event was broken. Every 4th of July for the past 92 years, competitors from around the world have come to the corner of Surf and Stillwell in Coney Island, to participate in Nathan\u2019s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.\u00a0 In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[280,592,656,855,1201,1202],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-coney-island","tag-hot-dog-eating-contest","tag-joey-chestnut","tag-nathans-famous","tag-takero-the-tsunami","tag-takeru-kobayashi"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}