Perhaps the culmination of our nation’s great experiment, the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest has become America’s top Independence Day sporting event.
Joey Chestnut, then, might be the most American of competitors, having won the prestigious championship sansabelt nine times heading into the 2017 edition of the event. He’s outpaced the competition each year, and had his sights set on a new record today.
And, perhaps as an embodiment of the American Dream, he achieved his goal:
That’s a lovely sight, isn’t it?
ESPN was prepared for the achievement with a graphics package that attempted to appropriately contextualize Chestnut’s tenth title within the annals of sports history:
The entire broadcast always has a bit of a tongue-in-hot-dog-stuffed-cheek feel about it, so it’s not like ESPN deserves to be excoriated for this, but still. It barely makes sense within some kind of twisted dream (the kind of weird dream you probably have after eating 72 hot dogs in a very brief amount of time).
Congratulations to Joey Chestnut. (Ever wonder if he’d be a competitive eater if he’d gone by the more mature Joseph Chestnut? That sounds like a realtor.)
Also, all of these titles should have an asterisk since Kobayashi hasn’t been there.
