2008 nathans hot-dog eating contest: chestnut retains title in overtime!!

i am in awe of joey chestnut! i'm in awe of takeru kobayashi! these masters of controlled gluttony are amazing eating machines - impossible to believe how much they can consume in one sitting (or standing, in yesterday's case) unless you watch them with your own eyes. last year, watching chestnut win the hot-eating title from six time champion kobayashi (via espn) was jaw-dropping!
i missed yesterday's espn live broadcast of the event. but the outcome of this classic rematch was the only news of the day i was interested in!

in a bizarre twist, the 12 minute time limit was shortened to ten minutes! bizarre because the reason given was the original contest - way back in 1916 - was only ten minutes. this change clearly threw off all the participants. chestnut said he was prepared to eat 70 hot dogs (in the familiar 12 minute format)!

so what better way to kick start a new set of rules than with a tie! chestnut and kobayashi each wolfed down 59 hot dogs in the shortened time frame! now what?

well, thank goodness for tie breakers. a tie, especially in a competition which counts "partial" dogs eaten - the fraction of a hot dog in your mouth, ultimately swallowed, when time runs out - has to be a rare outcome. after all the regulation gluttony, the declared winner of the 2008 contest would be whomever consumed 5 additional(!) hot-dogs the fastest!

and the post regulation speed eater was CHESTNUT!! woo hoo!!

so in honor of his victory, i had 2 hot dogs at last night's 4th of july bbq. consumed at a relative crawl by comparison....