1

H ere is a mountain of corned-beef sandwiches, each crammed with meat. Eleven men and one woman—some of the world’s top competitive eaters—intently scrutinize the sandwiches as they’re wheeled by on a trolley toward the stage. We’re at an outdoor shopping mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the site of the third annual TooJay’s World Class Corned Beef Eating Championship. One contestant drove a thousand miles to be here. He got a flat tire and had to double back to Avis in the middle of the night, but he’s made it, and he’s ready to battle. I’m intrigued and mystified by the dedication of these athletes, as some of them call themselves. Who are they? What motivates them? I notice them glancing at one another in complicated, intense ways.

2

But a sense of fatalistic doom pervades the air. This is because one man is quite simply predestined to win. His name is Joey Chestnut, and he’s a charismatic, sweet-natured 28-year-old Californian in surprisingly good shape for someone who bulldozes hideous amounts of food into his stomach on a regular basis. In the past six years, Joey has completely dominated the “sport” of competitive eating as it has expanded from a once-a-year carnival stunt to a worldwide tour. He holds world records for hot dogs, asparagus, funnel cake, jalapeño poppers, gyros, grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken wings, cheesesteaks, shrimp wontons, tacos, and at least a dozen other “disciplines.”

3

About 200 people have turned up to watch him try to break his own corned-beef-sandwich record. Fans surround Joey for his autograph. One of them sidles over to me. His name is Sam Barclay. He’s such a devotee, he says, that he’s actually got himself a job with the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), the sport’s governing body, as a helper and part-time emcee. And he is in total awe of Joey.

4

The fans are mostly ignoring Joey’s challengers. There’s the world number two, Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti, muscular, wiry, a Mohawk haircut, almost always the bridesmaid, rarely the bride. There’s a beautiful woman in her twenties named Maria Edible—a cupcake and a burger tattooed on her arm and the word EDIBLE tattooed inside her mouth. There’s a bear of a guy named Bob Shoudt—about the only family man on the circuit. He has three kids and puts any prize money he makes into their college funds. I notice another challenger—a waif of a boy with long dark hair—staring fixedly at Joey from across the crowd.

72

5

I approach Joey. “Who’s that boy?” I whisper.

6

“Matt Stonie,” he whispers back. “He’s new. He’s good. I watched a YouTube video of him in training. You hear his mother in the background encouraging him. When I saw that, I thought, ‘Why would she be encouraging him? There must be something wrong with him for her to be encouraging him to eat.’” Joey lowers his voice. “Apparently when he was 15 he was anorexic.”. . .

7

Our conversation is interrupted by the emcee, Rich Shea, who is telling the audience how blessed we Americans are to have the freedom to eat as many corned-beef sandwiches as we like under a big blue sky. He introduces the contestants. Each takes his place on the stage. Joey is, of course, last: “. . . the bratwurst and pork rib eating champion of the world, the calzone champion of the world, the Nathan’s Famous hot-dog-eating CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! JOEY CHESTNUT!”

8

For two days now, I’ve been listening to Joey extol the sport as a sensei would a martial art. He has told me, for example, how he has studied the ingestion techniques of snakes: “Their muscles are contracting constantly. You’ll see when I’m eating, there’s a constant weird up-and-down motion. I’m using my whole rib cage to compact the food.” Then there are the years he’s spent determining how long to fast before each contest (three days) and which oils best lubricate the digestive system. He’s settled on an exact combination of specific brands of olive and fish oils, but he won’t divulge more. “I had to figure it out,” he said, “so why should I let it be known?”

Competitive eating is, of course, a manifestation of the American urge to turn absolutely everything, even something as elemental as eating, into a competition.

9

So after all of Joey’s talk of science and preparation, I was imagining the corned-beef contest to be somehow more graceful and balletic. But as Shea counts down to zero and the eating begins, what I see instead are twelve people grotesquely cramming huge piles of meat and fat-sodden rye bread into their mouths. The juice drips down their arms, saturating their shirts. Their puffed-out cheeks are beetroot red. They resemble sweaty, meat-smeared squirrels. The sickly smell of fat permeates the hot air. I notice that the fastest eaters are squeezing the sandwiches in their clenched fists before swallowing them. With one hand they’re shoveling in the food, with the other they’re gulping liters of water or, in the case of Pat Bertoletti, bright red cherry limeade. Coupled with the semi-masticated sandwiches that are spraying from their mouths in globules as they slobber onto themselves and the table, the whole thing looks like an unimaginable crime scene.

10

It’s a ten-minute contest. By minute six, most of the field is belching and cramping. But not Joey Chestnut. Pat Bertoletti is doing his level best to keep pace with the champ, and young Matt Stonie seems remarkably adept for someone so slight. But Joey is on another level. He’s Usain Bolt, but with sandwiches. He had been telling the truth about the “weird up-and-down motion” in his rib cage. He looks like he’s performing a disquieting contemporary dance routine. . . . We are witnessing a new world record! Joey devours twenty corned-beef sandwiches, shattering his previous record by five and a half. Barclay shakes his head in wonder. “It’s not pretty,” he concedes. “But it is beautiful.”

11

Joey collects his $5,000 prize money, poses for the cameras, and disappears behind the stage, where I find him looking terrible. . . . “Describe how you’re feeling with twenty corned-beef sandwiches inside you,” I ask. “I’m used to it,” he says. “But . . . pain . . .” He’s speaking in fractured sentences, with great difficulty. It seems cruel for me to continue the interview. I congratulate him once again. “Hopefully I’ll feel okay,” he says, “in four or five hours.”

12

Competitive eating is, of course, a manifestation of the American urge to turn absolutely everything, even something as elemental as eating, into a competition. And it is as old as America itself—or maybe it started in the early ’70s. The fact is, it’s tough to suss out the history of the sport through the thick-as-mustard layer of PR myth that has been slathered onto it by generations of pitchmen. There are tales (possibly true) of pioneers staging contests in the early days of the republic to celebrate bountiful harvests. Nathan’s Famous, the Coney Island hot-dog vendor whose annual Fourth of July extravaganza remains the Super Bowl of the sport, claims its event goes back to 1916, when a group of immigrants put on a contest to test their patriotic mettle. This is (almost certainly) untrue. The first Nathan’s contest, as best anyone can remember, was actually held on July 4, 1972. . . . And for the next twenty-five years, that’s about all competitive eating amounted to—the Nathan’s contest. . . . Until, that is, July 4, 2001—the most extraordinary day in the history of competitive eating. Watching the news footage filmed that day, during the minutes before everything changed forever, I was struck by how lackadaisical things seemed. . . . Until that day, the Nathan’s Famous record was twenty-five and one eighth dogs in twelve minutes. Takeru Kobayashi ate fifty. He became an international media sensation, the subject of thousands of gleeful headlines. CNN put him on a list of “Japan’s greatest sports heroes.” And he remained unbeaten—and virtually synonymous with competitive eating—for six years. But then a new and even greater virtuoso emerged.

73

13

Joey “Jaws” Chestnut grew up in Vallejo, California. Being the third of four boys, he was always searching for something he could beat his older brothers at. And that thing seemed to be eating very fast. He showed such a talent for it that in 2005, his youngest brother entered him into a lobster competition in Reno. “I’d never eaten lobster before,” Joey told me. “I was 21. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I was scooping guts. But I tied for third. And the two men who beat me didn’t look good. One was Bob Shoudt. He seemed in pain. And I felt fine! I was ‘Oh, my God, they look like they’re dying. And I can eat so much more!’ I knew I was made for it after that contest.”

14

Joey decided that night to dedicate his life to the pursuit. He became obsessed—“nervous, always nervous”—and his discipline paid off in Coney Island on July 4, 2007, when he scarfed down sixty-six hot dogs before an audience of 40,000. . . . Joey defended his title the next year and every year since. At the 2009 Nathan’s contest, he set a new world record with sixty-eight hot dogs. Last year, between his prize money and sponsorships, he raked in $205,000. . . .

15

And now the big one. Coney Island. The Fourth of July. The Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Championship, with a $10,000 first prize. “The only one,” Pat Bertoletti tells me, “the public really cares about.”

16

Thousands have gathered on the boardwalk by the beach. Many are chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Onto the giant stage marches a procession of stilt walkers, dwarves dressed as Uncle Sam, cheerleaders, bodybuilders, a girl singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Presiding over the pageantry is the legendary emcee George Shea, wearing a straw boater. ESPN is filming it all for a 3 p.m. broadcast.

17

The eaters are crowded into a little room backstage where thousands of hot dogs are being mass-cooked. They’re like gladiators sharing a dressing room with the lions. . . . Joey and Pat sit next to each other backstage but say nothing. Joey once told me they rarely talk before an event. Sometimes they’ll heartily slap each other on the back in the moments before a contest begins, feigning friendliness, when what they’re actually trying to do is irritate each other. So it was all the more remarkable when, last night at the hotel, I saw the two men huddled in a corner, speaking quietly. It was a melancholy and surprising conversation. Pat was asking Joey, “When you retire, will you give me the secret?”

18

“You’ve seen everything I do,” Joey replied. I turned to Pat. “Do you sometimes feel like Buzz Aldrin to Joey’s Neil Armstrong?”

19

“For sure,” he said. Despite the tough-guy mustache and scary Mohawk, there was a real sweetness to Pat. He seemed resigned to the fact that he has hit the ceiling, that he’ll always be second best. And he’s had enough, he said. He’s getting out of this crazy sport.

20

“I don’t think I can ever win [hot dogs],” he told Joey and me. “And I’ve done everything else.” “You might quit everything?” I asked. “Yeah,” said Pat. Then Joey said, “I’ve thought about getting out, too.”

21

“You want out, too?” said Pat, incredulous.

22

“I do,” said Joey.

23

“Why?” I asked him.

24

He backpedaled slightly. “It’s not that I want out,” he said, “but I don’t want to linger.”

25

What he meant is that once you’re number one, there’s nowhere to go. Joey is trapped at number one like Pat is trapped at number two.

74

26

“My goal is seven [Nathan’s titles] in a row,” Joey said. “Next year could very well be my last.”

27

“Do you also want to quit because you realize it’s a bizarre way to live your life?” I asked him.

28

“Probably,” Joey said.

29

The truth is, rarely have I done a story about something that’s so utterly, existentially pointless and so emblematic of the American tendency to go way too far. . . .

30

Halfway through the contest, something impossible seems to be happening. “Matt Stonie!” George Shea is yelling into the microphone. “Many are calling him the new Joey Chestnut! This is amazing, ladies and gentlemen! Matt Stonie is doing so well he’s only four hot dogs behind Joey Chestnut. Nineteen years of age! And yet he’s the only one truly putting pressure on Joey Chestnut!” . . . He’s gaining on Joey, all those years of pain propelling him on. Twenty-eight hot dogs, twenty-nine hot dogs, thirty hot dogs, thirty-one. . . . But then, suddenly, heartbreakingly, at thirty-four dogs into the contest, Matt hits a wall. (“Died out,” he’ll later say on Facebook.) The manic pace with which he’d been inhaling hot dogs slows dramatically, and a look of defeat crosses his flushed, sweaty face. . . .

31

The audience—many of whom are wearing Joey Chestnut T-shirts and holding Joey Chestnut signs—is screaming his name as he stands before them, exhausted and utterly spent, basking in their love. A few minutes later, as Joey wades triumphantly into the throng, holding his championship belt aloft, I remember something he told me a few months earlier: “I have to learn to ignore my feelings. Not just the feeling of hunger and the feeling of full, but the feeling of embarrassment, too. I have to remember that this is only weird if I make it weird.” Soon Joey is swallowed by the crowd, and I lose sight of him. All I can see now is the belt itself, its painted gold glinting in the relentless sun, bobbing along in a surging tide of red, white, and blue.

Write a paragraph analyzing Ronson’s use of describing strategies in The Hunger Games to give readers a vivid impression of a person:

Ongoing past

Present

Simple Past

Write a paragraph analyzing Ronson’s use of flashbacks in The Hunger Games:

Write a paragraph analyzing Ronson’s role in The Hunger Games:

Write a couple of paragraphs analyzing Ronson’s use of showing and telling to convey his perspective in The Hunger Games: