Miki Sudo, Patrick Bertoletti win Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest belts in historic displays

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 4: Miki Sudo wins the women's title with a record-breaking 51 hot dogs at Nathan's Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4, 2024 in New York City. Sixteen-time winner Joey Chestnut is banned from this year's contest due to his partnership with Nathan's competitor Impossible Foods, which sells plant-based hot dogs. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
By Mark Puleo
Jul 4, 2024

The annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is the greatest 10-minute encapsulation of American independence, and Miki Sudo and Patrick Bertoletti left Coney Island on Thursday as the rightful owners of the coveted pink belt and mustard belt.

Sudo rose to legendary glizzy gobbling status earlier in the day, crushing a women’s world-record 51 franks to dominate both the field and her digestive system en route to her 10th pink belt.

Mayoi “Ebimayo” Ebihara — whose nickname translates to “shrimp mayonnaise” — gave Sudo a run for her money in the second half of the women’s competition, finishing with a personal best of 37 total dogs, but Sudo pulled away in the home stretch of a historic performance.

In the men’s round an hour later, Bertoletti housed a personal-best 58 weiners to win the mustard belt, but the focus of the competition was more about who wasn’t there: Joey Chestnut. After 16 career mustard belts, Chestnut did not participate due to a contract he signed to represent a rival hot dog brand.

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Chesnut, who ate a world-record 76 HDBs (hot dogs and buns) at the event in 2021, will be competing on Labor Day (Sept. 2) in a separate event that will air on Netflix.

In his absence, Bertoletti rose to the occasion to take the Coney Island crown. The veteran eater returned from a 10-year retirement in 2022 to finish fifth with 33.5 HDBs. He demolished that mark Thursday, racing out to an early lead and then held on in a fierce battle.

Without Chestnut, the men’s field was tightly bunched for all 10 minutes. With three minutes to eat, the top five men were all within six dogs of each other, a stage that included Geoffrey Esper, ranked No. 2 in the Major League Eating (MLE) rankings, and Sudo’s fiancé, Nick Wehry, who was ranked No. 4.

“I wasn’t going to stop eating today until the job is done,” Bertoletti said after the win. He entered the day ranked No. 9, a position which will certainly rise.

A native New Yorker, Sudo entered Thursday as the No. 3-ranked MLE eater. Her 51 dogs would have finished second overall, men’s or women’s, in 2023, behind Chestnut. No woman has ever won both the pink belt and the mustard belt.

Sudo previously held the women’s world record at 48.5 dogs, set in 2020. Since becoming a top-ranked eater in 2014, the only year she hasn’t won the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest was in 2021, when she was pregnant and skipped the competition.

Wehry finished in fourth place Thursday with 46 HDBs, just behind James Webb at 52 and Esper at 53.

In the men’s event’s precursor, Eric “Badlands” Booker broke the world record in the gallon lemonade chug, emptying the jar in 21 seconds to win his fourth straight title.

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(Photo: Adam Gray / Getty Images)

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Mark Puleo

Mark Puleo is a News Staff Editor at The Athletic. Before joining The Athletic, Mark covered breaking weather news as a digital journalist and front page digital editor with AccuWeather. He is a graduate of Penn State University and its John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. Follow Mark on Twitter @ByMarkPuleo