Chesnut Eats 68 Dogs at Coney Island; Elephants Immediately Trample New Record

Joey Chestnut, a.k.a. Jaws, won the 2009 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest in Coney Island, New York.

The three time defending champion ate his way through the 94th annual contest on the Fourth of July after choking down 68 dogs in 10 minutes–a new world record.

“I’ve been practicing hard,” Chestnut said after the victory. “I knew it would be hard to beat me.” For most of the bout, the 218-pound professional eater maintained a comfortable two-dog lead over his archrival, six-time titleholder Takeru (The Tsunami) Kobayashi, who finished off 64 franks.

At one point the ex-champ almost suffered a reversal– a reversal is eater’s slang for throwing up. Fortunately, Kobayashi managed to catch his up-chuck in his hand and shove it back into its rightful place before being disqualified. Vomiting is to professional eating as steroids are to professional baseball– it is just not acceptable (remember Lardass?).

“It was such a good day. I’ve never eaten that many before. After the second minute I knew my body was cooperating,” Joey said. He walks away (huddled over, no doubt) with $20,000 and the coveted Yellow Mustard Belt.

In other competitive eating news, three Ringling Bros. Elephant’s took their own mustard belt in the inaugural Coney Island hot dog bun-eating contest between them and and three competitive human eaters.

At the end of the six minutes, Juliet Lee, Gravy Brown and Eric (Badlands) Booker collectively downed 143 buns – peanuts compared with the 505 buns scarfed up by elephants Bunny, Susie and Minnie.

“This was a great challenge for our species,” said Major League Eating Chairman George Shea. “I expected that the humans would beat them.”

I for one welcome our new pachyderm overlords. Better luck next year, pathetic humans.

Via CNN/SI and updated with info from The NY Daily News.