On July 4th every year, there’s a hot dog eating competition which brings out the world’s best at such things. This year, former world record-holder Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi tied with defending champion Joey “Jaws” Chestnut. Get this — they each ate 59 hot dogs (with bun) in 10 minutes.
At this news site, you can watch a video of the competition, but I would advise against it. It might sound neat to discuss this, but it’s not so fun to watch it. Really…
The winner gets a one-year supply of hot dogs from Nathan’s.
Anyway, back to the 2008 competition. I had the misfortune of watching it this year because the people whose house I was at decided to watch it for some reason. The two former champions tied, so we were wondering what should happen. One of us had the idea that they should have a race across a football field, lengthwise, to see who wins. That would be funny to watch them try to run after consuming 59 hot dogs in just 10 minutes. (They’d probably need to censor out the ensuing vomiting.) But instead of this, they had a “dog off” where the one who had 5 more first won.
Also, there were quite a few contestants that weren’t even close. As far as I saw, none of them stopped eating early. I’d think they’d stop the torture if they saw the scoreboard and noticed that they were 10 hot dogs behind already. Why would they keep going? But maybe they wanted to say they did their best.
Buffet o' Blog 
Not a Speed Eater, but stayed at a Holiday Inn Express
Wait, so the prize for winning this thing is… more hotdogs??
I figure if you won then either 1) you’re now sick and tired of eating hotdogs, or 2) really like to eat you some hotdogs.
And if it’s 2, and you can eat 59 hotdogs in ten minutes, then how can they afford to give you a year’s supply?
Thomas Wayne
That’s a good point, particular #2. (Of course, you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, so it has to be a good point, right?)
If the current champion goes there to “practice” for next year’s competition, he’s going to go through a LOT of hot dogs! There has to be some limit on what they consider a year’s supply.