When eating is sport, victory as agonizing as defeat

SHEBOYGAN, Wisc, Aug 20 (Reuters) Jeremiah Jimenez had just wolfed down his 11th bratwurst at an eat-off here earlier this month when he began to experience what is politely known in the competitive eating world as a ''reversal in fortune.'' It was a crisis moment and the 29-year-old, who competes on the eating circuit as ''El Toro,'' decided to try to play through, swallowing hard and reaching for another sausage.

''But when my hand touched the 12th brat,'' Jimenez says, ''I just gagged. The greasiness just sent a message to my brain to stop ... I was really disappointed. My capacity is double that.'' But even that wouldn't have put him in the money. Takeru Kobayashi, a 27-year-old eating phenomenon from Japan, took first place in the event, swallowing 58 brats in 10 minutes and smashing the 35-brat world record set last year by American Sonya Thomas.

ESPN, the US cable network that began covering the sport in 2004 and aired a three-day US Open of Competitive Eating in 2005, says the eat-offs draw the same number of viewers as regular season men's college basketball.

''There's clearly an audience with an interest in these events,'' says network spokesman Nate Smeltz.

But this popularity has touched off a debate in a country where one-third of the population is obese, according to the government.

The competitors themselves are not generally overweight; former brat record holder Thomas weighs a mere 105 pounds (47.6 kg).

SPORT OR SPECTACLE? Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a US nutrition advocacy group, blasts the food companies that sponsor the events for encouraging consumers to equate ''pigging out'' with legitimate sports and warns the competitors are risking their health.

Jimenez, who finished 13th in a field of 16 in Sheboygan in Wisconsin, thinks the risks are overblown. ''I talked to my doctor before I started,'' he says, ''and he just shook his head and told me to watch my cholesterol.'' George Shea, the founder and chairman of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the sport's leading organising body, refuses to get pulled into the debate. ''America has an obesity crisis, which has nothing to do with competitive eating,'' he says.

Since it was founded in 1997, IFOCE has propelled competitive eating from the fringes of county fairs and church picnics to the centre of popular culture. In the process eaters like Kobayashi and Thomas have been turned into celebrities.

Among the IFOCE's key rules: One reversal of fortune and your eating career is over -- after you clean up the mess.

Shea, an Ivy League-educated marketing executive, admits the IFOCE was originally simply a way to promote the food industry clients, like Nathan's Famous and Krystal hamburgers, whose products the contestants were inhaling.

''It was kitschy, campy fun,'' he says.

It became a sport, says Jason Fagone, the author of ''Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream,'' because the contestants took it seriously.

''The eaters decided that they would prefer it not be a joke and that it really mattered,'' Fagone says.

Fagone, who spent a year researching his book, says he's of two minds whether the eaters are athletes. ''It's not a sport in the classical sense of being a way to showcase the human form at its most poised and graceful,'' he says. ''But it's skilled physical work that ... takes discipline and training and mental focus.'' One thing he's sure of: Only five of the top eaters actually make a living on the circuit -- though that could grow if its popularity grows.

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