(Hot) Dog Days of Summer: 19 Takes Title

Defending champion Hirofumi Nakajima retained his world title Saturday by eating 19 hot dogs--including buns--in 12 minutes at Nathan’s hot-dog-eating contest at Coney Island in Brooklyn.

The 23-year-old, 135-pounder finished ahead of Charles “Hungry” Hardy, a 29-year-old Brooklyn corrections officer, who downed 17 1/2 dogs. In third place with 14 hot dogs under his belt, so to speak, was Ed “The Animal” Krachie, 35, a 6-foot, 7-inch, 381-pound mechanical engineer from Queens who came out of retirement in an effort to defeat Nakajima.

From a field of 16, the 5-foot, 6-inch Nakajima again held aloft the Mustard Yellow International belt. He also won a huge red trophy and 20 pounds of Nathan’s hot dogs.

Nineteen hot dogs are the equivalent of five pounds of food, said contest spokesman George Shea.

“I will be back next year,” Nakajima, a furniture delivery worker from Kofu, Japan, vowed through an interpreter. Last year, he wolfed down 24 1/2 dogs to set a world record on his way to the title.

By finishing second, Hardy became the U.S. champion. He asked for a beer when he finished his dogs.

Hardy said he has never practiced for an eating contest. “I have no secret,” he said. “At the urging of my union, I just walked in two weeks ago and signed up.”

He said he plans “to go for it again next year. I’ll give it my best.”

The eating contest has been held at Coney Island every Fourth of July since 1916 as a publicity stunt for Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, which opened at the amusement park that year.

Briton Barry Noble, 53, who claimed to be haggis-eating champion--1 1/2 pounds in 84 seconds--only managed to down 12 hot dogs and 10 buns. Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish of the heart, lung and liver of a sheep mixed with oatmeal and boiled in a sheep’s stomach.

The National Hot Dog Council estimated that on Saturday, Americans would eat 88 million hot dogs.