LateNightPictures.com has some pictures of a competitor in the (London UK) All You Can Eat Breakfast Championship with two “breakfast-ettes” (Katie Downes and Malene Espensen) No results or other details are provided.

update The event was to announce the contest which will take place on May 29. Premier Travel Inns has a page about the contest. First place is 500 pounds.

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Bordeaux Undiscovered reports that the wine societies of Oxford and Cambridge Universities want to have wine tasting classified as an official collegiate sport. The wine contests will be judged by how many questions about the wine a taster gets correct and not volume or speed of consumption.

Food falls into the sport category – so why not wine? Competitive Eating is considered a sport. This is a sport which involves the consumption of large quantities of food in a short time period – typically 12 minutes or less. I think the rules can be stretched to include wine tasting – don’t you?

As usual it boils down to tradition – and this is a difficult thing to break in our ancient educational establishments. Awarding colours for sporting achievements dates back to the early 19th century when Oxford and Cambridge staged their first rowing races.

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The British tabloid, The Sun, has a contest writeup of last month’s mince pie contest won by Sonya Thomas at Wookey Hole Caves. The author competed and finished with 9 pies.

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(Thanks Berenice Baker) BBC reports that Richard Townshend of Exeter, England failed to break the sprout eating record of 43 in one minute. Mr Townshend finished with 36 sprouts. The record attempt raised £250 for charity. See also: icWales, Daily Record

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This is London reports that Brendan Brockbank, an 18 year old, won the World (Single) Pie Eating Contest at Harry’s Bar in Wigan, England. After winning by finishing his meat pie in 78 seconds, he won the vegetarian pie contest by eating a smaller pie in 34 seconds. (Sonya Thomas ate one pie every 13 seconds over 10 minutes at the mince pie contest last month)

BBC article

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(Thanks Berenice Baker) The BBC blog has an entry about whether they should have covered last month’s mince pie eating contest. The entry currently has 19 comments one of which reads:

By covering it, you endorse it? Rubbish. All this worrying and fussing is silly. I have a very hard time indeed believing that, after seeing the piece, any child would think “I know! I’ll try shoving several packs of mince pies in my mouth, too!” Kids aren’t going to get fat because of coverage of mince pie eating competitions. It’s the equivalent of suggesting that, after watching a football match, a fat child will suddenly be inspired to lose all their excess weight and go and play football. If that was the case, all we’d have to do is shove fat children in front of “Sky Sports” and the problem would be solved.

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Happy Chanukah to the Jewish readership of this site. TotallyJewish.com has an article about a party in which the largest menorah in London, England was assembled from legos. (It is not clear if it is the largest menorah in London overall or just the largest menorah made of legos 😉 ) During the party, a doughnut eating contest was held. The winner ate 10 doughnuts, a better showing than Hank “the Tank” had in his Wing Bowl stunt today.

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(Thanks Berenice Baker) From The Evening Telegraph:

Poppadom lovers guzzled as many of the Indian wafers as they could today in a bid to break the world record. A parliamentary aide, solicitors, rugby players and students were among competitors vying for the title in The Balaka, St Andrews. The winner was reigning champion, Dundee businessman Tim Stobbs, who scoffed 15 in five minutes, beating his previous 12.

See also: whichfranchise.com, Daily Record & Ananova

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Reuters has a video of the mince pie contest in England last week.

Red Orbit has a first person account by a participant in the contest

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A brief video clip of the mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole Caves won by Sonya Thomas is available on youtube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=EIomf4Tjmno

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from Wookey Hole Caves Big Eat web page

Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas 46 mince pies £1000
Shane Bridle – Sign Maker, Somerset 15 £500
Gary Harrison – Chef, Wells 13 £250
Simon Davies – Wells Town Mayor 10
Roberto Mendez – Brazil 10
Terry Harrison – Chef, Wells 9
Nick Francis – The Sun, London 9
“Fat Kenny” – Circus Director, Devon 8
Paris Troy – GWR Radio, Bristol 7.5
Jayne Fryer – The Daily Mail, London 7
Andy Bush – DJ, Bristol 7
Mattie Andrew – Chef, Wellls 6
A D Tree Pirate – Pirate, Somerset 6
Ellie West – Wildlife Worker, Somerset 5
Lisa Knights – South West Tonight 1

The IFOCE.com results apparently get 3rd place wrong

updated metro.co.uk has a picture and brief article

updated #2
Independent article
Daily Mail article

updated #3
BBC article

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Slashfood has a post on the two main formats for eating contests, fixed duration and fixed amount, focusing on the decision of the “World” Pie Eating contest to change from a three minute duration to awarding victory to the eater who can eat a single pie in the shortest amount of time.

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Channel 4 has a video clip of an on site interview Sonya Thomas did to promote Wednesday’s mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole Caves.

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from timesonline.co.uk:

With the news that the Wigan-based World Pie Eating Championship has changed its rules to join the fight against obesity — and introduced a vegetarian option — sport in the town needed to regain its credibility, and were it not for a nightmarish 90 seconds shortly before half-time, this might have been Wigan Athletic’s fifth win in six matches.

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The Manchester Evening news reports that the “World Pie Eating Championship”, held at Harry’s Bar in Wallgate has altered its rules to appease the health lobby. The contest format was originally an eat all you can in 3 minutes, but now the winner will be the eater who can eat a single meat pie in the fastest amount of time. A vegetarian pie eating contest was also added.

This is a different contest from the IFOCE endorsed mince pie eating contest that will be held a week from now.

updated this is London and metro.co.uk also have articles

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(from iht.com) The web page for the mince pie eating contest to be held at Wookey Hole Caves can be found at http://www.wookey.co.uk/bigeat/ Sonya Thomas is definitely an expected entrant.

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The Guardian reports that a mince pie eating contest sanctioned by the IFOCE will be held at Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset on November 29. Sonya Thomas is expected to compete for the £1,000 ($1890) first prize.

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The Times of London has a column about the lack of success by eaters from the United Kingdom.

Obviously, cultural objections to competitive eating might include the fact that it is vulgar, mindless, upsetting to watch and, in a world in which people are starving, morally obscene. You could say the same about Formula One, though, and that still has its UK-based participants.

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24dash.com has an article about an English performance artist’s attempt to break Sonya Thomas’ record of 8.4 pounds of baked beans in 2 minutes and 47 seconds. He failed to break the record but did manage to eat over 10 pounds of baked beans in 30 minutes. (Don “Moses” Lerman probably assumes that the record should have an asterisk since he did not compete in the Centerville, IN contest in 2004 in which it was set.)

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Simon has informed me that he has founded the first competitive eating organization in the United Kingdom:

Hi – Simon here from CEUK – the UK’s only CE organisation. We have been formed
to promote the CE scene in the UK. I’d love to hear from you in the US with
advice and thoughts on how we can get the UK interested in CE.

The website for the CEUK can be found at http://www.freewebs.com/ceuk/index.htm and its blog is located at http://www.freewebs.com/ceuk/myblog.htm

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