TRENTON (AFP) – Each man gobbled up 44 meat rolls in 10 minutes, but it was the last bite that earned one of them the USD2,000 top prize in the very American pastime of competitive eating.
The winner, Geoffrey Esper, ate just a bit more of roll number 45 than his closest competitor, sealing his triumph in this chapter of a sport called Major League Eating (MLE).
The runner-up, James Webb, said that in most of the contests this year the winner down to the fourth place finisher were separated by “a swallow or a mouthful or a serving size”.
The 35-year-old Australian, who moved to the United States (US) to compete full-time, added, “It’s very competitive.”
The prize money is nowhere near enough to live on, said Webb, a bearded, healthy-looking man who gets by financially with help from sponsors and his YouTube channel, which has 115,000 viewers.
“Everybody’s got another job but Joey,” said Crazy Legs Conti, a maitre d’ at a New York restaurant who said he has made several thousand dollars this year on the pro-eating circuit.
That Joey is Joey Chestnut, an eating superstar who has won 16 of the last 18 editions of the yearly Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island, the Super Bowl of the MLE season.
Because of a problem with a sponsor Chestnut did not take part this year. But he did win USD100,000 by beating another competitive eating legend, Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, in a duel organised by Netflix.
Even with Chestnut absent, thousands of spectators gathered on Coney Island in July and around one million watched online as a man named Patrick Bertoletti took the title held by Chestnut and won USD10,000 by wolfing down 58 wieners in 10 minutes.
“There’s a lot of media coverage. We got more media coverage this year than ever before,” said MLE co-founder George Shea.
He has visions of expanding overseas, after organising an event in Thailand.
