According to the official history, the Nathan’s record before Frank Dellarossa ate 21 HDB in 1991 was 18.5 HDB by one armed carnival worker Peter Washburn in 1959. This mark is not mentioned in any article in the Google News archive about a pre-1991 contest.

• 1986 Record holder is listed as Walter Paul, who ate 17 in 1978. Walter Paul is the reported winner of a 1967 contest.
• 1986 title match – Record is mentioned as 13.5, set several years before
• 1982 – record is mentioned as 14 by Jim Mattner, who served as contest judge. (No article about a contest won by Mattner is present in the news archive)

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A listing of Nathan’s winners obtained from online news archives follows.

Some notes about the contests:

• 1986 title match, Hiroaki Tominaga was the first reported Japanese competitor in a Nathan’s contest. At 6 feet, 6 inches and 264 pounds, he is considerably larger than Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota. While in New York City, he competed in the Empire State Building staircase race and finished last.
• 1984 Birgit Felden is the only reported female winner of a July 4 contest. She is now a business professor unless there are multiple Birgit Feldens from Cologne.
• 1981 It was not clear from the contest report if the duration was 5 minutes or the winner stopped eating after that time and had a large enough margin to win.
• 1978 Co-champion Kevin Sinclair was 10 years old
• 1974 Atlantic City – this is the first reported contest outside Coney Island. The runner-up, Carmen Cordero, might be the winner of the first two Wing Bowls.
• 1972 Labor Day – After her victory, Melody Andorfer said “I’m determined not to let those male chauvinist pigs dominate us any longer.” She would model swimsuits in articles about Coney Island in 1973 and 1974.
• 1967 – this contest was held to commemorate the centennial of the hot dog. It is difficult to believe that Walter Paul ate 127 hot dogs in an hour, but that is what is in the news archive.

The following contests are mentioned in the news archives, but no winners were reported for them:

The 1973 labor day weekend contest was changed to a corn on the cob contest due to a lack of meat. The unnamed winner ate 4 ears in less than 3 minutes.

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The Palm Beach Post (via the Google News archive) reported that some local officials would serve as judges in the 1997 Nathan’s qualifier held in Boca Raton, Florida:

In Boca Raton, a hot dog capital of another ilk, the orgy begins Saturday at noon at Nathan’s in Boca Village Town Square (pick up entry forms there). No weenies among the judges either. The strong-willed group includes Boca Vice Mayor Steve Abrams, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore

Theresa LePore would go on to receive greater notoriety as the designer of the “butterfly ballot” used in Palm Beach County in the controversial 2000 election.

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Gersh Kuntzman’s article about the reduction of Nathan’s contests by 2 minutes has been updated with an image of the document that established the original contest duration at 10 minutes according to George Shea.

The New York Times (via the Google archive) reports that the 1978 Memorial Day contest in which Kevin Sinclair, then 10 years old, tied for first was 6.5 minutes long:

[May 30, 1978] … swimming pools for the season. .fit Nathan’s Famous in Concy Island. 4-foot 9-inch 75-pound Kevin Sinc lair, of Brooklyn, 10 years old, tied an IS-. … for first place in the hot-dog-eat ing contest, a field of 28 contestants to get down 10 hot dogs, with buns, in six-and-one-half minutes. …
From Many of Holidayless New Yorkers Made Yesterday… – New York Times ($$)

update The New York Times City Room has a blog entry about the contest length

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(from anon comment) Gersh Kuntzman has an article for the Brooklyn Papers about the shortening of Nathan’s qualifiers by 2 minutes which states that the July 4 finals will be 10 minutes as well. An anonymous eater repeats Rhonda Evans’ conjecture that the purpose of the reduction was to minimize the chances of a reversal. The article closes with a mention of the 3.5 minute contests in the 1970s.

Gothamist and Eater.com have posts about the article

update June 11 Serious eats has a blog entry about the shortening with quotes from Ryan Nerz

The Sheas say that a 1986 article from the New York Times was responsible for the truncation.

The note said the change for the upcoming July 4 contest comes after the discovery of a trove of “numerous old items and ephemera” near the Nathan’s stand at the historic corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues in Coney Island.

“It was in the form of random notes and contest-related scribblings that were apparently unearthed at Nathan’s,” said George Shea, chairman of Major League Eating.

“We put together a team of experts to determine its validity and then, through the use of what I believe scholars call ‘a Google search,’ we discovered a New York Times article from 1986 that referred to the contest as taking 10 minutes.”

Major League Eating President Richard Shea said the Times article was particularly compelling evidence that the contest’s traditional length was actually 10 minutes, not the 12 minutes that have been the standard for at least two decades.

That link first appeared on eatfeats in March 2007

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“Footlong”, a documentary about the impact of hot dogs on American culture, can be viewed on revver.com. There are two segments about the 1998 Nathan’s hot dog contest in which Hirofumi Nakajima defended his title by beating Ed Krachie: Segment #1, Segment #2 The second segment ends with a prediction that one day the 30 HDB mark will be broken.

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• 2002 – Steve Rushin article about Thanksgiving contest at Mickey Mantle’s restaurant
  
• 2002 – Letter from George “Garbage Gut” Glum
• 2002 – Competitive Eating: Sport? Not a sport?
• 1999 – Steve Rushin goes roller coaster riding with 1997/8 Nathan’s champ Hirofumi Nakajima after an eating contest (Will he sue the producers of “Hurl” for copying his concept?)
• 1998 – Rick Reilly column about Hirofumi Nakajima

I will try to make another post about pre 1998 competitive eating articles if I can find any.

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A group from roadfood.com toured New York City hot dog restaurants and took a picture of the Nathan’s Wall of Fame which reveals that the champions from 1984 to 1987 have been dropped to make for space for future winners. Removing these listings eliminates whatever inaccuracies they might have contained, but discrepancies are still present between the remaining entries and newspaper archives.

Maureen Dowd, now a famous columnist, wrote the article about the 1984 contest. She does not mention the winner’s name.

We will see if the truncation of the champions listing will foreshadow modifications to the picture section of the Wall of Fame.

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The website for TV Tokyo has a page about the July 19, 2001 edition of TV Champion which culminated in footage from the 2001 Nathan’s finals where Takeru Kobayashi doubled the record from the previous mark of 25. The program also included qualifiers to determine who would compete alongside defending champion Kaz Arai. In one of the qualifiers, eaters competed against a sushi making robot.

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Youtube has a brief clip from the 1996 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest finals in which Ed Krachie edged out Mike DeVito, 22 hot dogs to 20.

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Several articles about competive eating from the New York Times archive which previously required payment are now available for free (in reverse chronological order)
preview of 2005 NJ pizza contest, mentions Pat Philbin
2005 Review of Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating
Short article about Kate Stelnick (she claims to have drunk 14 glasses of water while eating the 96er)
Long 2003 profile of Carson “Collard Green” Hughes
Preview of 2003 Wing Bowl, focuses on Bill “El Wingador” Simmons and “Belly” Donna Villec
Report on the 2002 pelmeni contest
2002 preview of Nathan’s finals, mainly about the Sheas
2002 article about Don Lerman, Badlands Booker & Cookie Jarvis, calls George Shea a “competitive eater since 1988”
2001 profile of Kevin Lipsitz
Article on quick start controversy at 1999 Nathan’s finals
Report on 1999 Nathan’s finals
preview of 1999 Ben’s Deli’s matzoh ball contest
1998 article about Mike DeVito, also mentions start of the IFOCE, originally the International Federation of Hot Dog Eating
1997 interview with Ed Krachie
Report on December 1996 duel between Ed Krachie and Nakajima
1996 Nathan’s final report
1995 Nathan’s finals results
Report on 1995 Nathan’s New Jersey qualifier, contest was 10 minutes long
article on 1994 Nathan’s finals, mentions Curtis Sliwa’s participation
Report on 1990 Nathan’s, says Jay Green & Mike DeVito tied for first place
Preview of 1987 Nathan’s, registrations were still being accepted by phone on July 3
Report on 1984 women’s only pancake contest

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The only instance of a pre-1972 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest I could find in the Google news archive was a June 30, 1967 competition held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the hot dog:

Champ Eats 127 Hot Dogs

NEW YORK was the 100th anniversary of the hot dog, and Walter Paul, a 400- pound truckdriver, sat down and ate 127 of them with relish, catsup and mustard. Paul, 32, was rewarded for his Ruthian took him one hour (?) a trophy proclaiming him the world’s champion hot dog eater.’ ,The “dog-in” was held at Nathan’s Famous, the Coney Island frankfurter palace. The occasion was to honor Charles Feltman, who slipped a sausage into a roll in 1867 and named the creation “frankfurter” after his birthplace in Frankfurt, Germany.

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In the 1970s, Nathan’s held hot dog contests at times other than the fourth of July. The winner of the 1972 Labor Day weekend contest was Melody Andorfer, who ate 12 hot dogs & buns in 5 minutes. The AP did an article on her victory which was printed by several newspapers in the Google News archive:

Nathan’s 23rd annual hot dog eating contest separated the women from the boys at Coney Island Saturday. The woman went to the top. “I can’t believe I ate that all” said the winner, a 105-pound brunette, after she finished 12 seven-inch hot dogs in five minutes, rolls and all. Eighteen-year-old Melody Andorfer, of Astoria, Queens, who belongs to the National Organization for Women and several other liberation groups, drank three large colas with her male runner-up after she beat seven other women and eight men in the contest. Then she had a sandwich for lunch. The runner-up, 260-pound Gary Silverman, 19, Brooklyn, asked the winner for a date after he managed to devour 10 hot dogs during the event. Miss Andorfer, who said she did not feel queasy after the contest, asserted she had ham and eggs, coffee, and orange juice for breakfast. Asked why she entered The contest, Miss Andorfer said, “I’m determined not to let those male chauvinist pigs dominate us any longer.”

No other reports of Ms. Andorfer defending her title or entering another contest can be found online. (A 1973 Coney Island Labor Day weekend hot dog contest was converted to a corn contest due to lack of beef):

Throngs of people flocked to Coney Island on Saturday and some of them found they beat the heat only to encounter another problem: the beef shortage. Because of the lack of beef, a hot dog eating contest was turned into a corn-on-the-cob eating contest. The winner downed four ears of corn in less than three minutes.

After her victory, Melody Andofer does appear on the front pages of two newspaper modeling swimwear at Coney Island:

Charleston Daily Mail Thursday, July 05, 1973

PATRIOTIC DISPLAY- Melodie Andorfer displays a stars and stripes bikini Wednesday at New York’s Coney Island. She was one of thousands who migrated to the beaches on the Independence Day holiday.

The Chronicle Telegram June 1, 1974, Elyria, Ohio

Displaying the Colors One of Melody Andorfer’s lesser known attributes is her ability as a seamstress. Here she models a swim suit she put together for the opening of Coney Island, New York’s summer playground.

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Don “Moses” Lerman’s most recent blog entry has a picture of himself at the unveiling of the Nathan’s Wall of Fame. That monument, which lists Don Wolfman as the 1986 winner with 12 hot dogs, needs correction according to this New York Times article:

In a weekend of indulgence, 27-year-old Mark Heller of Manhattan -depending on one’s perspective -might rightfully lay claim to the prize for the most indulgent act.

Mr. Heller, a television commercial producer and director, was crowned the Nathan’s Famous 1986 hot dog-eating champion after consuming 15 1/2 all-beef hot dogs, 6 1/2 inches long – and buns, some with mustard – in 10 minutes.

Mark Heller was inspired by Birgit Felden’s victory in the 1984 contest.

After victory, Mr. Heller searched for bicarbonate of soda and said that the festive atmosphere of Liberty Weekend and seeing a ”German girl who had never eaten a hot dog” win the contest two years ago had prompted him to participate.

15.5 hot dogs would be the best known Nathan’s result from the 1980s. It would be interesting to learn what year the contest changed from 10 to 12 minutes.

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I have wondered about the identity of the woman in the lower right corner of the Nathan’s Wall of Fame in Coney Island and assumed that it was Birgit Felden, the only female champion listed, who won with a total of 9.5 hot dogs. That assumption is bolstered by the claim in “Horsemen of the Esophagus” (p. 222) that Birgit Felden was a pretty 17 year old member of the West German judo team, since that description matches the picture. Googling “Birgit Felden” produces information that Birgit Felden, born in 1967, is now a management consultant with a doctorate who has authored three books along with a current photograph that validates that this Dr. Felden is the pictured Nathan’s competitor.

1984

2006

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If you have ever wondered what happened to Steve Keiner, the 1999 Nathan’s Hot Dog Champion who is currently the last non-Japanese to win that title, he is currently in Prague in the Czech republic. (It is not clear if he has moved there or is just vacationing) The Prague Post has an article (in English) describing Keiner’s eating a Czech sausage called a parek. (He finds the parek wanting.) Keiner has been able to cut his weight almost in half from the 416 pounds he weighed when he competed.

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