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No-Bayashi -- hot dog champ loses
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[July 05, 2007]
NEW YORK
(AP) -- In a gut-busting showdown that combined drama, daring and indigestion, Joey Chestnut emerged Wednesday as the world's hot dog eating champion, knocking off six-time winner Takeru Kobayashi in a rousing yet repulsive triumph.
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Chestnut, the great red, white and blue hope in the annual Fourth of July competition, broke his own world record by inhaling 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes
-- a staggering one every 10.9 seconds before a screaming crowd in Coney Island.
"If I needed to eat another one right now, I could," the 23-year-old Californian said after receiving the mustard yellow belt emblematic of hot dog eating supremacy.
Kobayashi, the Japanese eating machine, recently had a wisdom tooth extracted and received chiropractic treatment due to a sore jaw. But the winner of every Nathan's hot dog competition from 2001 to 2006 showed no ill effects as he stayed with Chestnut frank-for-frank until the very end of the 12-minute competition.
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 Kobayashi finished with 63 HDBs -- hot dogs and buns eaten -- in his best performance ever. His previous high in the annual competition was 53 1/2. The all-time record before Wednesday's remarkable contest was Chestnut's 59 1/2, set just last month.
The two gustatory gladiators quickly distanced themselves from the rest of the 17 competitors, processing more beef than a slaughterhouse within the first few minutes. The two had each downed 60 hot dogs with 60 seconds to go when Chestnut
-- the veins on his forehead extended - put away the final franks to end Kobayashi's reign.
[Associated Press;
by Larry McShane]
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