Joey Chestnut Compares Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest To Indy 500 And He Might Be On To Something
The Indy 500 and the contest have more in common than you may realize.
If you see a bunch of people crowded around the TV during your Fourth of July cookout, I promise you it's because everyone wants to see Joey Chestnut make his triumphant return to the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest after a 1-year hiatus over a sponsorship squabble.
It's easily the biggest thing to happen to competitive eating since the advent of elastic waistbands, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone more excited than Chestnut himself.
The competitive eating GOAT — and, for my money, one of the most dominant athletes of a generation — compared the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest to another signature American summer holiday event, the Indianapolis 500.
"If you're an IndyCar racer, you want to be (in the) Indy 500,’’ Chestnut said in an interview with USA Today. "There might be other eating contests all throughout the year and there might be other races throughout the year. But if you're any car driver, you should be at the 500.
That's the way I felt about Fourth of July. If you're a competitive eater, you should be at the Fourth of July hot dog contest.’’
Now, Chestnut is a Hoosier, so it makes sense that he'd go with the Indy 500 analogy, but it got me thinking about how these two events have more in common than I realized.
For starters, they're both major parts of summer holiday or holiday weekend festivities; the Indy 500 on Memorial Day Weekend and the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on the Fourth of July.
Both events are also the Super Bowls of their respective sports, and starting this year with the Wiener 500, glizzies are a key part of the festivities.
Gluttony too. It's obvious how that factors into the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. As for Indy, all I can say is that eating a giant pork tenderloin at 9:30 in the morning on race day in the shadow of the most iconic track in racing was one of the highlights of my life so far.
Chestnut enters this year's contest as a heavy favorite ahead of last year's champ, Patrick Bertolleti, with the 16-time champ hoping to eclipse the 80 hot dogs and buns mark.