Along with America's birthday (though not really?), July 4th is also home to another fun spectacle: the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. For those of you not in the know, the winner of the contest is the man or woman who can eat the most buns and franks in a 12 minute span. In recent years, this contest has been dominated by Takeru Kobeyashi, a Japanese man who looks more like an ultimate fighter contestant than someone who is capable of packing in 60 buns and franks in 12 minutes. In 2007, after winning six Nathan's contests in a row, Kobeyashi was upended by American Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, 66 - 63. Prior to this defeat, the string of victories led some observers to suggest that Kobeyashi was, relative to his sport, the greatest and most dominant athlete in the world.
And herein lies the motivation for this contest: is professional eating a "real" sport? Whoever makes the best argument for or against will receive a prize (details here, which also links you to my other summer contest). As always, the only parameters for the prize winning entry is that I have to like it, so you are open to argue by induction, analogy, contradiction, whatever. Please leave your entry as a comment; the contest closes two weeks from today.
Finally, be sure to watch the 2008 Nathan's contest, noon eastern on ESPN.
3 comments:
Professional eating is definitely a sport!
This is a hard skill to acquire, as the eaters have to train for months. This takes a lot of physical strength because the eaters have to fight the strong gag reflexes. Also, their hands have to move fast to get the food from the table to their mouth. They have to have strong jaws to chew up all of the food. Typically the competitive eaters are seen jumping around while they are eating so that they can get all of the food down faster. By the end of longer contests, such as Nathan's, many of the eaters are dripping sweat and are completely exhausted.
Also, it takes a lot of mental toughness to get through an eating contest. There may be times when you want to give up and throw up everything, but the top competitors push through the voices in their heads telling them to give up. Although many people do not believe that competitive eating is a real sport, if you break it down and look closely, it is clear that competitive eating can be counted as a sport.
I agree that competitive eating is a sport. But it is not yet clear whether or not competitive eating will become an olympic event. To become an olympic event sports generally have to be popular in many countries so that there are enough competitors representing enough countries to hold an olympic eating contest. Currently professional eating is most popular in the United States and in Japan. Concerns about wasteful consumption of food as manifest by competitive eating are a barrier to increased popularity of this sport around the world. But as the global community makes advances in the prevention and treatment of disease and starvation, the aforementioned ethical concerns regarding competitive eating will be assuaged, and more widespread popularity of competitive eating will render this sport an olympic event.
what about other life functions becoming sports? competitive sleeping, competitive bathroom use, competitive changing clothes.
Post a Comment