Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest: What You Need To Know

CONEY ISLAND, BROOKLYN – It's that time of year again, when Coney Island becomes the headquarters for the world most gluttonous sport: hot dog eating.

Sponsored by Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, the contest counts the number of franks competitors ingest in just 10 minutes. And people take it really, really seriously.

Major League Eating – yes, that's a real, global organization – manages the details surrounding the competition each year.

Not just anyone can enter the competition. Participants need to qualify in regionals in order to make it to the big leagues.

Competitors can include condiments, but usually don’t. They do, however, have beverages handy to avoid having the dry bun get stuck to the roof of their mouth. There’s strategy in making sure everything goes down as efficiently as possible.

Participants can be disqualified, too. Yellow cards are given for messy eating, which often means the whole bun or dog didn’t make it into the person’s mouth, making it easier to move onto downing the next dog. And there’s no purging allowed – vomiting results in disqualification.

This year, competitors include the reigning men’s champion, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, who last year downed a world record of 72 hot dogs in ten minutes. He’s won the competition ten times.

On the women’s side, Miki Sudo has won the competition four times and was able to eat 41 dogs last year.

To see if these two will win the famous “Mustard Belt” or if a new face will take them down, head to Coney Island on the Fourth or tune into ESPN to watch it live from your at-home barbecue party.

The women’s competition starts at 10:50 a.m. on ESPN 3, and the men’s competition will begin at 12 p.m. and re-air at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on ESPN 2.

To get there by subway, take the N, Q, D, or F to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station; by bus, you can take the B68, B82, or B36 to Stillwell Avenue; and by car, you can take the Belt Parkway East to exit 6 Cropsey Ave or Belt Parkway West to exit 7b Ocean Parkway.

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