3rd round Italian salad 7 minutes
Sonya Thomas over Ron Koch, Tim Janus over Rich LeFevre, Cookie Jarvis over Badlands Booker, Kobayashi over Sam Vise. Rich LeFevre did not enjoy much hometown advantage, getting upset by Tim Janus who rebounded from a moderately disappointing performance at Nathan’s.

Sonya finished her second 2 pound salad as time expired, beating Ron Koch handily. Kobayashi essentially quit as he had built up a big enough lead. I am not sure if he quit before finishing his second salad, if he did then Sonya can claim a world record for Italian salad as she appeared to be the only competitor who finished two salads.

Sonya’s feature was essentially a repeat of the profile from Nathan’s in which she wore a witch outfit.

Semi Finals Potato skins
Sonya defeated Tim Janus rather easily, 53 skins to 44 while Kobayashi destroyed Cookie Jarvis with 72 skins. When asked what Janus needs to do to move into the elite, Sonya said he needed to expand his stomach capacity. Given Sonya’s increasing capacity, Janus is up against a moving target.

Potato skins should probably be judged by weight and not number as potato size is quite variable.

Finals 6 pound tailgate platter 15 minutes
Sonya was beaten pretty easily by Kobayashi, who came close to finishing two platters. She was really struggling at the end. The platter was difficult to eat due to the diversity of food items on it. Sonya tried to sort of make a stew out of the items, but it did not make that much difference. It was hard to follow the contest as it jumped from the start to the end and it did not give when the first platters were finished. I think the tailgate platter was the only contest item which contained meat.

A parody of the Michelob Ultra commercials, in which a man and woman compete in something like roller blading and then get hydrated by drinking a low carb beer could be made in which Kobayashi and Sonya chow down and then relax after the competition drinking a Michelob Ultra to reduce the amount of calories they consume. (I wonder how Sonya’s metabolism affects how her body processes alcohol.)

The next chance for Sonya to face Kobayashi will probably come at the Crystal burger championship if Kobayashi chooses to defend his win there.

A good showing for Sonya, defeating four talented competitors in a wide array of food items despite disappointment at the end. If she could practice on a ESPNZone tailgate platter, she might have been able to devise more effective techniques. While the 2005 US Open of Competitive Eating and Nathan’s hot dog contest have shown that the current distance between Kobayashi and Sonya is considerable, they also made it apparent that there is an undeniable gap between Sonya Thomas and whoever might be competing for third.

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Bigbrian.org now has the second round results up. Sonya Thomas advances to the second round eating a US record 11 pounds of spaghetti in 14 minutes, defeating Oleg Zhornitskiy. (I feel full after eating a half pound of spaghetti.) Carlene LeFevre was defeated by Ron Koch.

Kobayashi ate 13.5 pounds of spaghetti, setting a world record. I think that this (11/13.5 = 81.5%) is the best result percentagewise for Sonya vs. Kobabyashi and continues her trend of improvement (2005 Nathan’s 37/49 = 75.5%, 2004 Krystal 46/69 = 67.7%, 2004 Nathan’s 32/53.5 = 59.8%).

(update July 30 12:21 AM) beautifulbrian.com has 2nd round results up with some pictures (but none of Sonya) (he claims Sonya consumed 10 pounds of pasta).

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Results and pictures of the first round of the US Open of competitive eating have been posted at beautifulbrian.com Sonya and Carlene (1 picture of Sonya) both won easily. The most notable upset was Joey Chestnut. If I am reading the brackets correctly, Sonya will face Oleg Zhornitskiy and Carlene will take on Ron Koch in round 2.

Update 9:50 PM Better formatted results, but no pictures can be found at bigbrian.org

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I planned to make an entry listing links to articles about and results of the first day US Open of Competitive Eating, taped earlier this month, but this article on Jed Donahue was the only thing I could find. It is surprising that ESPN would cover an event for three days straight in prime time and not bother to promote it or carry the results. Retroactive good luck to Sonya and Carlene.

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I changed the site template from the default WordPress theme to Becca Wei’s Almost Fall theme and and modified it so the width is variable. I also swapped the green and red values, making the colors browner so I am calling the modified theme Almost Fall.

This theme can be downloaded at http://www.trencherwomen.com/almost-fall.zip I haven’t really tested it so I can’t guarantee it will work on all browsers and blogs

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This blog has been transferred from Blogger (on my own domain) to WordPress, as this will give me much more power and flexibility. I basically used the default skin for WordPress and just added some pictures to the header. I will eventually make some changes to the template, including going to a variable width format.

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Photo album from May 26 SF Chronicle about Sonya Thomas
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2005/05/26/eat.DTL&o=4

Remaining pictures are by firmrep357

Pictures from before 2005 Wing Bowl
http://community.webshots.com/album/266831340hhDvEn/1
http://community.webshots.com/album/266831340hhDvEn/2

Pictures from 2004 Nathan’s Contest (has some pictures of Carlene LeFevre)
pictures show the size difference between Sonya and Badlands Booker
http://community.webshots.com/album/161294535eoWBBP
http://community.webshots.com/album/161294535eoWBBP/1
http://community.webshots.com/album/161294535eoWBBP/2

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I have written a Wikipedia entry about Carlene LeFevre

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This blog has been moved off blogspot and onto its own server located at http://trencherwomen.com/

I am not thrilled with the trencherwomen domain name, but I could not think of any better ones. The other names I considered, like femaleeaters femalecompetitiveeaters fastmetabolismfemales, were too long and unwieldy or sounded like a porn site.

I will probably move off blogspot completely once I decide what blogging system I should use.

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The number of records claimed by Sonya Thomas decreased to 25 to 24 on July 9 when Rich LeFevre bested her 2004 total of 6 (huge) slices by 1.5 slices. Sonya did not participate in this contest sponsored by the Bacci pizzeria in Chicago.

It appears from the picture that Carlene LeFevre competed with her husband. If she entered, she failed to crack the top four in a field consisting solely of unranked Chicago residents except for her spouse. This would represent a considerable dropoff from her Nathan’s result from five days earlier when she placed 7th against the best eaters in the world. I wonder if she was taking it easy in preparation for the U.S. Open in her hometown the next week.

(Note: This article says all the entrants were male, but also that Rich ate 8 slices and the length was 16 minutes so I am not sure how accurate it is added 7/25 1:51 AM)

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In the 2005 Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest, Sonya Thomas had a greater ratio of hot dogs eaten to body weight than Kobayashi did:

37 hot dogs / 105 lb. = .352 > 49 hot dogs / 144 lb. = .340

Sonya’s ratio is still less than the all-time best set by Kobayashi last year:

53.5 hot dogs / 144 lb. = .372 > .352

However, if a 99 lb. weight for Sonya is used (some articles use this figure), that appears to put her just ahead of Kobayashi’s all time best:

37 hot dogs / 99 lb. = .374 > .372

It is necessary to use Kobayashi’s 2004 weight of 132 lb. in computing his ratio for that year. (He gained a considerable amount of muscle in 2005 which he believes hurt him). That gives him a comfortable lead over Sonya’s best possible ratio:

53.5 hot dogs / 132 lb. = .405 > .374

Hopefully after several more years of improvement Sonya will be able to surpass her Japanese rival in absolute terms and make the “pound-for-pound” qualifier irrelevant.

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Photobucket.com has some good pictures of Sonya taken by (and with) Marv after the 2005 Nathan’s hot dog contest. You could never tell from her expression or her mid-section that she had just consumed 37 hot dogs. Despite the looseness of her T-shirt, you would still assume that some stomach swelling would be visible. Her torso must contain an internal trash compactor if not a black hole.

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Welcome to trencherwomen (a trencherman is a big eater), a blog about healthy women with hearty appetites and their gastronomic feats. This blog aims to provide a resource for fans of competitive eaters such as Sonya Thomas and Carlene LeFevre, eating challenge victors like Kate Stelnick and Sharon Scholten, champion eaters of the past such as Lynda Kuerth and Laurie Ginden as well as any other women gifted with fast metabolisms and elastic stomachs who have yet to eat competitively.

There are several compelling threads in women’s competitive eating, such as Sonya Thomas’ quest to surpass Kobayashi and whether Kate Stelnick will resurface after shocking the world that I hope to provide information about on this blog.

The Fast Metabolism Females yahoo group will complement this blog. Video clips and some other files will be hosted there.

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