Helen Haggerty has started a blog at helenhaggerty.blogspot.com with a short contest report. She is already looking forward to her next contest, so hopefully we will avoid a situation where an impressive competitive eating debut is followed by immediate retirement. Ms. Haggerty claims that playing college field hockey is responsible for her impressive performance.

Before this extended weekend started, you probably would not have expected that two novice women would win prizes in eating contests and both would be recent Seven Sisters graduates who competed in sports. Gretchen Salyer was a member of the Harvard / Radcliffe crew team.

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From IFOCE com:

Sky City Posole contest results:
1. Pat Bertoletti, 146.25 oz.
2. Helen Haggerty, 138.75 oz., recent Bryn Mawr graduate
3. Rich LeFevre, 136 oz.
4. Erik “The Red” Denmark, 117 oz.
5. “Mongo” Marquez ?
6. William “Wild Bill” Myers
?. Andrew “Skinnyboy” Lane, almost 64 oz.

Ms. Haggerty’s performance is probably the most impressive debut for a woman in an IFOCE contest (and possibly the best performance by a newcomer for either gender) The only comparable female debut would be Sonya Thomas setting the American women’s record with 18 hot dogs at the Molly Pitcher travel plaza Nathan’s qualifier in 2003, but she did not defeat a top 10 and top 15 eater and almost beat the #3 ranked eater at that event.

All top 4 finishers beat Carlene LeFevre’s 2004 record of 109.75 oz., assuming the contests were the same length.

updatedAndrew Lane competed and has a brief blog entry. He will have a longer report later.

updated #2 miningjournal.net has an article about Matt “Foracious” Forss which claims he will in the posole contest.

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Justin Mih might have a female competitive eating counterpart in the Harvard community. The Harvard Crimson reports that Gretchen Salyer, a 2005 graduate, won the garlicky greens eating contest at b.good in Cambridge by eating 2.73 pounds of vegetables in 5 minutes, defeating last year’s champion John Pepper. Ms. Salyer is a former member of the Harvard/Radcliffe crew team.

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The Heart Attack Grill announces that the ABC News program 20/20 will have a segment about that restaurant on Friday.

In other Heart Attack Grill news, “Nurse” Caterina defeated a radio DJ in a Quadruple Bypass Burger eating contest. Could “Nurse” Caterina be the successor to Carlene LeFevre as the Queen of the Southwestern competitive eating?

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EmeraldCoast.com has more on the Apalachicola Oyster Festival. The women’s & overall winner, Mel Tyler, has a married daughter.

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Tallahassee.com has a report on the Apalachicola (Florida) Oyster Festival with results for the oyster contests. Separate contests for men and women were held, and a woman Mel Tyler had the best overall performance with 196 oysters eaten in twelve minutes. Hyer Dement won the men’s contest with 190 oysters.

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In a recent comment about the Mobile Wing Bowl, Hall Hunt said he had never heard of a wing eating contest as short as three minutes. Youtube has a clip of a wing eating contest a quarter of that length for sorority members. The winner, Keighrah (last name unknown), ate an impressive 24 wings to win the contest.

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As far as I know, Sonya Thomas is the only woman to compete in any Krystal Square Off III qualifer, but that might change next year. The Krystal Lover’s blog has entries about a former Miss Chattanooga (and top 10 finisher for Miss Tennessee) who enjoyed $20 of food from Krystal with another female friend in a single meal.

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The Daily Citizen has an article about Jessica Beall of Bloomfield Indiana who won a pizza eating contest for high school students. Jessica was the only member of the mostly male field to finish her large pizza under the time limit of 8 minutes. Jessica says her role model is “Mushmouth” Machetti (actually “Mushmouth” Mariano) who competed in pizza eating contests on local Cleveland television in the 1970s (and is mentioned on page 67 of Horsemen of the Esophagus) Jessica hopes to eventually compete in the Nathan’s finals, but she will have to wait until she turns 18 to qualify.

The Daily Citizen also has an article about the 2005 pizza contest. Jessica was ineligible to compete in that because she was an employee of the restaurant sponsoring the contest, but she claims to have won her age category the preceding three years and has also won pizza contests in Cincinatti, Indianapolis and Terre Haute.

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(From unaccepted comment by “Mr. Wright”) AICE News reports that Christina Gumola, who won Pittsburgh Steeler tickets by winning a Roethlisburger eating contest in 2004, won tickets to the Steeler’s opener last week by winning a hot dog eating contest held at KISS FM 96.1. Christina tied with 97 pound Andrea by eating 8.5 hot dogs in 5 minutes, but was awared the victory by the DJs because they claimed she finished eating first. A men’s contest was also held, the winner, Joe, ate 6.5 hot dogs.

Youtube has videos of the contests: women’s, men’s

kissfm961.com has pictures from the contest: Gallery 1, Gallery 2

Kiss FM also hosted an unsuccessful attempt at eating 40 HDB in 40 minutes which is available on youtube

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Liz and Krista’s report from the Three Brothers Pizza eating contest has been uploaded to truefan. A flickr gallery of the contest is also available.

Some observations from that writeup:

Juliet Lee claims that she can eat more than Sonya Thomas. Like Sonya, she believes her forte is non bready foods which do not require much chewing.

Pat Bertoletti will appear (or might have appeared already) on “Attack of the Show” on G4/Tech TV sometime this week.

Andrew Lane also competed in the contest and has some reports and pictures on his blog.

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from beautifulbrian.com:

Three Bro’s Pizza Results
1. Pat B 19 slices
2. Chip Simpson 17 slices
3. Bob Shoudt 15 slices
4. Larry Mcneill 13 slices
5. Brian Subich 12 slices
6, Allen Goldstein 11 slices
7 Pat Philbin 11
Rest of the field ?????

Each pie based on 8 slice 16” pie

Brian Seiken has also started the fall season of his video podcasts with a show featuring Joe LaRue

(From Luther) Sonya Thomas did not do a hometown contest because she is doing a contest in Hong Kong this weekend (.doc file)

Updated 10:02 pm – steakbellie fan Wendy Scherer attended the contest and wrote a blog entry about it. The winner of the amateur contest was a woman (maybe megamunch’s friend the Pizza Princess”) who ate 11 slices in ten minutes.

Updated 8/13 4:38 pm – The Washington Post has an article with a picture and information about the amateur winner, Juliet Lee, who said she was inspired by Sonya Thomas. Like “The Black Widow”, Ms. Lee is 39 years old and about 5’4″ and 105 lb.

WTOP radio has an AP article about the contest

Updated 8/14 12:45 am – megamunch has a blog entry and gallery of the contest

Updated 8/16 12:40 pm – steakbellie has a blog entry and gallery of the contest

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I have recently come across the results for the four Frank’s Red Hot wing eating contests held in conjunction with beach volleyball contests held in the summer of 2005. Two of the winners were females, making them the only females I am aware of besides Sonya and Carlene to win a coed contest.

Amy Walter of Hillsborough, NJ won the Belmar, NJ contest. Her total of over 3 lbs is almost twice as much as any other winner, but the contest durations are not listed so it could have lasted longer. Kate Stelnick appears to have company among college age female Garden Staters who had one impressive debut in 2005 and have apparently done no eating competitions since that time.

Speedeat.com says Joe Menchetti appeared on ESPN2’s Cold Pizza to promote the Belmar contest, but it does not list the results or indicate if he competed in that contest on his web page.

The other female winner, Ann Steele, is from Arlington, VA, so Sonya is not the only Northern VA woman to have won a contest. Ms. Steele did an interview for a local newspaper after her victory.

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Kate Stelnick and Lori Weiss might have a possible rival on the horizon. BullyRook has a picture of an unnamed woman (who looks a little like Mandy Moore) holding a four pound burger (I am not sure if this is the meat weight or total weight) which he claims she consumed without assistance (but he did not witness her finish it). The restaurant is not named either.

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The entry deadline for Moe’s Southwest Grill Burritos for Life contest is Monday. (Entrants cannot be ranked by any competitive eating organization)

Lori, who ate a three pound burrito in 1:30 in 2001 in an Orange County contest, could be a possible contender in Moe’s contest.

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Just as the Beatles’ performance on the Ed Sullivan Show created Beatlemania, Rich and Carlene Lefevre’s appearance on Ripley’s Believe It or Not in 2000 launched their career as the world’s greatest competitive eating couple. The episode (#109) was recorded at the Big Texan steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas and both LeFevres finished the restaurants famous 72 ounce steak (two women, Tammy Hooker and Annette Havard, also finished the steak) The SciFi channel will rerun this episode on May 12 at 4pm. The Amarillo Globe News has an article about the taping.

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Leyla Milani of NBC’s “Deal or no Deal” game show (and former WWE Raw diva search participant) claims to have eaten four hot dogs and buns in under a minute.

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Pat Bertoletti’s recent dominance in corned beef events was not foreshadowed by his initial contest eating that food. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Bertoletti came in third in a corned beef contest in August 2004 behind Cookie Jarvis and Molly Cary, who has apparently not participated in other eating contests. (I think that Ms. Cary is the most recent woman to win a prize in an IFOCE contest other than Sonya and Carlene).

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If this blog entry is accurate, Kate Stelnick is no longer the only Delaware Valley female who holds an eating challenge record. kb of the phillycynics blog claims to have eaten 30 pierogies at Sugar Mom’s Church Street Lounge in Philadelphia, breaking the restaurant’s record by 5 Polish pastries. She wore a Lance Armstrong bracelet while accomplishing her feat as Ms. Stelnick did. kb received a t shirt as a prize for breaking the record. kb could be a possible contender to return the Wing Bowl crown to the Delaware Valley.

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(This is for the commenter who complained that I was not writing enough about female celebrities last fall 😉 )

(from cluckbucket.com) The Sofia News agency reports that Bulgarian TV personality and ex-gymnast Nelly Atanassova won a charity chicken wings eating contest.

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This forum thread states that the only member of the Plaza Casino “Wall of Fame” to have completed the 9 pound Barrick/Big Daddy burger as of October 2004 was a slender woman who is apparently not Sonya Thomas. (Since the finisher looks somewhat like Sonya, she is apparently not Carlene LeFevre either.) I would appreciate it if someone going to the contest could verify if this claim is true.

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(from competitiveeaters.com/news.htm) Thanksgiving weekend, AICE held a series of three contests in pumpkin pie, spaghetti & meatballs and large hotdogs at the Casino Niagra in Ontario which were won by Joe Menchetti, Coondog O’Karma and Mark Lyle respectively. Massachusetts resident Angie Michaud made a strong entrance into competitive eating at that event, taking third place in hot dogs and performing strongly in spaghetti, but finishing out of the money. She will compete in her first contest in the United States at the potato latke contest in New York City later this month.

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This forum thread describes Mara Thomas’ efforts to compete in the 2004 Sweet Potato Casserole contest held at the NC State Fair. (Based on the comments in the thread, she is apparently an eater of considerable abilities). She wound up having to miss the contest because it was held during working hours. If she enters the 2005 grilled cheese contest held at the same site she will not have to face Sonya Thomas who won the previous year’s event.

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