http://youtu.be/6HL6XDUcV60
Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas Wins her third consecutive title for Nathan’s Famous annual July 4th hot dog eating contest , though she fell short of her record, eating only 36.75 hot dogs in 10 minutes instead of 45 hot dogs last year (and 41 the previous year). Thomas beat out her main rival, Juliet Lee, by 0.75 of a hot dog.
Earlier in the week, ESPN.com did a nice profile on Sonya Thomas:
“She immigrated to the United States in 1995 at age 27. Because people had difficulty pronouncing her Korean name (Lee Sun-kyung), she changed it to Sonya Thomas. Aside from being able to eat 250 ½ jalapeno peppers in 9 minutes, her story is similar to that of a lot of immigrants in that she works long, hard hours. … Thomas is currently ranked No. 3 among all eaters (males and female) by Major League Eating. (And yes, there really is such an organization.) Depending on whether the particular competition has separate divisions, Thomas competes against men or women or both.”
In the men’s division, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut won and set a new world record of eating 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes. One reason why this competition is so well known is that the annual contest has occurred each July 4th in Coney Island, New York since 1916.
