A hot dog and bun fight: Nathan's Famous Fourth of July contest celebrates a legendary anniversary

If turkey is the traditional dish of Thanksgiving, then Independence Day will be forever associated with another foodstuff: hot dogs – lots of them. At midday on Monday in Brooklyn, the first competitors will begin filling their faces with the fast-food staple for the centenary edition of the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest.

Legend states that the contest was created on the Coney Island boardwalk in 1916, when an Irish immigrant named Jim Mullen approached a hot dog stand recently opened by Nathan Handwerker, who had emigrated to the US from Poland four years earlier. To prove just how American he was, Mr Mullen supposedly challenged several bystanders to an eating contest.

The truth is less romantic: the world’s best-known competitive eating event was created as a marketing stunt in 1972. But the story was spread so successfully that the New York Times reported it as fact until 2010, when PR supremo Mortimer Matz admitted to the newspaper that he'd helped to make it all up.

Wayne Norbitz, who spent 26 years as president of Nathan’s – the chain that grew from Mr Handwerker’s stand into an international brand – told the Associated Press this week that the original contests were modest affairs. “We’d honestly wait for a couple of fat guys to walk by and ask them if they wanted to be in a hot dog contest,” he said.

The winner of the inaugural 1972 contest managed to scarf 14 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. Today, the record is 69 dogs (about 20,000 calories) in a mere 10 minutes, set by Joey “Jaws” Chestnut in 2013. Mr Chestnut also holds eating records for hard-boiled eggs (141 in eight minutes), matzo balls (78 in eight minutes) and deep fried asaparagus (12.8lbs in 10 minutes).

Mr Chestnut’s unmatched run of eight straight 4 July victories was broken in 2015, when he was out-eaten by Matt “Megatoad” Stonie, who claimed the Mustard Yellow International Belt after poking down 62 dogs to the record holder’s 60. The rivals weighed in for their 2016 rematch on Friday at the original Nathan’s Famous site on Coney Island.

The spectre at this particular holiday feast is Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi, the Japanese eater who transformed the sport in the 2000s, winning six consecutive Nathan’s Famous contests from 2001 to 2006. The 5’7” Mr Kobayashi almost doubled the existing record of 25.5 hot dogs in 2001, downing 50 dogs with a set of then-unknown competitive eating techniques.

Those methods, later adopted by most top eaters, include breaking the dogs in half and dunking them in water, then wriggling to help each dog go down, a technique since christened the Kobayashi Shake. Mr Kobayashi has not taken part in the contest since 2009, when he refused to sign an exclusive contract with its organisers, Major League Eating (MLE), whom he recently described as “imperialistic”.

The winner of the Nathan’s contest takes home $10,000. Mr Chestnut, who competes in similar events year-round, reportedly earned close to a quarter of a million dollars in 2014 from eating alone. The sport is no place for amateurs: when former NFL star William “The Refrigerator” Perry took part in 2003, he managed to eat just four dogs in five minutes before dropping out.

Last year, the event had higher TV ratings than any baseball game broadcast the same day. The 2016 contest begins live at 10.50am local time on ESPN3 with the women’s contest, featuring women’s record holder Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, who chowed down 45 dogs in 10 minutes in 2012. The men’s contest begins at midday. The event will also be shown on ESPN at 3pm Eastern, and will be available to watch online.