NEW YORK — It was the Fourth of July in New York City, and for some, that meant only one thing. No, not fireworks, sweaty subway rides and family cookouts. It was time for the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island.
The contest has long been a holiday mainstay in New York, and its worldwide television exposure has made celebrities of its most famous champions. But this year’s event, which tests “competitive eaters” on how many hot dogs they can frantically scarf down in 10 minutes, crowned a new men’s champion for the first time in almost a generation and witnessed a women’s record.
Patrick Bertoletti, 26, from Chicago, snagged the men’s title — or, in the parlance of Coney Island, the Mustard Belt — by eating 58 hot dogs in 10 minutes, while Miki Sudo, 38, ate 51 hot dogs.
The former men’s champion, Joey Chestnut, 40, won the competition 16 times but was banned from entering after a falling out with the organizers. Bertoletti was the world’s ninth-ranked eater before the competition, according to Major League Eating, and he bested several competitors promoted by event organizers as Chestnut’s potential successors.
“Always a bridesmaid and never a bride,” Bertoletti said afterward. “But today I am getting married.”
He described winning as a life-changing event.
“With Joey not here I knew I had a shot,” he said, referring to Chestnut. “I was able to unlock something and I don’t know where it came from.”
Chestnut parted ways with the contest last month after he signed an endorsement deal with Impossible Foods, a rival to Nathan’s that makes vegan hot dogs.
But he loomed large over Thursday’s proceedings, in one case literally: A huge Pepsi ad bearing his image hung just one block from the contest location.
Many of the spectators also wore Chestnut memorabilia and chanted or held up signs pleading for his return. Mark Sterling, 35, did brisk business selling Chestnut bobblehead dolls to the crowd for $35.
“Why would you not want a bobblehead of a legend?” said Sterling, from the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. “Joey Chestnut not being here is like people saying Derek Jeter’s not at Yankee Stadium anymore — people still love him.”
Many viewers tuned in year after year just to watch Chestnut go through a pile of hot dogs like a wood chipper. News of his departure from the contest was met with the sort of public anguish one might expect for a major league baseball player, not a man who ate 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes last July 4.
At the women’s contest Thursday, Sudo easily won that title for the 10th time, besting a group of competitors, some of whom traveled to Coney Island from as far as Japan and South Korea.
She ate 51 hot dogs in 10 minutes, exceeding her 2023 total of 39.5 hot dogs. The runner-up, Mayoi Ebihara of Japan, ate 37 hot dogs.
As Sudo ate hot dogs two at a time, an ESPN announcer was inspired to opine, “Her style is like the prose of Eudora Welty,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning 20th century novelist not known to have enjoyed 51 hot dogs in one sitting.
After winning, Sudo thanked her family and the dental school in Tampa where she is studying to be a dental hygienist, and reflected on the pressures of being a mother, a student and world-famous hot dog eater.
“You feel like you’re juggling,” she said, “You try your best to balance everything.”
George Shea, the event’s larger-than-life emcee, described Sudo as a woman whose “soul shines like magnesium set afire against the dark mountain of night.”
Nonna Titulauri, 31, a banking intern who lives in the East Village, said she was thrilled to witness a women’s world record. But her friend Christina DeCarlo was less amused.
“It’s kinda gross,” said DeCarlo, 33, a project manager who lives in midtown.
