Joey Chestnut recaptured the Mustard Belt in his return to the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on Friday after a year away.
It wasn’t like I was working with other hot dogs or saying plant-based meat is better than regular meat,” Chestnut said.
Last year’s contest was won by Patrick Bertoletti, who finished second this year with 46.5 hot dogs and buns consumed.
Miki Sudo claimed the pink belt in the women’s contest after eating 33 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes.
Sudo holds the record for the event, which she set in 2024, with 51 hot dogs and buns consumed in 10 minutes.
After missing a year, Joey Chestnut returned to the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on Friday and regained the Mustard Belt.
After consuming seventy-five hot dogs and buns in ten minutes, Chestnut won the competition.
The 16-time champion made his comeback at Friday’s event after being disqualified from the 2024 competition because of a sponsorship dispute with the plant-based meat company Impossible Foods.
According to Chestnut, a misunderstanding led to the ban, as reported by The Athletic.
They had a slightly better understanding of my relationship with Impossible after last year. Chestnut stated, “It wasn’t like I was working with other hot dogs or claiming that plant-based meat is superior to conventional meat.”. They observed the meatless Monday campaign I was and continue to work on. People who regularly eat meat take breaks. If you’re determined to take a break but still have a craving for meat, you can have something that satisfies it. They only needed to hear me out before they realized that I wasn’t doing anything that would damage Nathan’s reputation. “”.
At the start of 2024, Chestnut, 41, had won eight straight championships. Patrick Bertoletti, who took second place this year with 46.5% of the hot dogs and buns consumed, won the competition last year.
After consuming thirty-three hot dogs and buns in ten minutes, Miki Sudo won the pink belt in the women’s competition.
The record for the event was set by Sudo in 2024, when she finished eating 51 hot dogs and buns in ten minutes.
With the victory on Friday, Sudo had won 11 straight games. In this competition, she ate the fewest hot dogs and buns of her career—33—after consuming 31 in 2019.
With 22 out of 75 hot dogs and buns consumed, Michelle Lesco, the only other female winner since 2014, came in second. In 2021, Lesco received a pink belt. Because she and her husband, fellow competitive eater Nick Wehry, were expecting their first child, Sudo did not compete that year.
(Image courtesy of Getty Images/Adam Gray).
