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3 Beijing Women to Enter Hot-Dog-Eating Contest
By wchung | 18 Jun, 2025
Three Chinese women will fly in from Beijing to take on Korean American Sonya Thomas at the first all-women’s Nathan’s hot-dog-eating contest to be held July 4th on Coney Island.
The inaugural women’s event will start at 11:30 a.m., immediately before the men’s event. A special pink champion’s belt provided by sponsor Pepto-Bismol will be presented as the female counterpart to the mustard belt that goes to the men’s champ. The pink belt made its debut at the weigh-in Friday morning outside City Hall over which New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg presided.
Thomas set a world record for women by gobbling 41 hot dogs in 10 minutes on July 4, 2009. Unfortunately, she lost to the 218-pound Joey Chestnut, the current Nathan’s champion.
“Serena Williams didn’t have to beat Roger Federer to win the Wimbledon title, and we don’t think Sonya Thomas should have to beat Joey Chestnut,” said master of ceremonies George Shea.
Eight other women will be competing against Thomas, nicknamed the Black Widow. Unlike most other physical contests, the hot-dog eating competition has traditionally featured women competing head-to-head with the men. In past years 105-pound Thomas has fared well against the men, often coming in second or third place to Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. She even beat Chestnut last September at the National Buffalo Wing Festival where she ate 181 chicken wings to Chestnut’s 169.
The new women’s event will allow due credit to competitors like Thomas and Juliet Lee, who also tips the scale at 105 pounds, say organizers.
World champion Chestnut aka Jaws is favored again this year in the men’s event. He won last year’s $20,000 prize by downing 54 dogs in 10 minutes. However, that was in the absence of former champion Takeru Kobayashi who had held the world record from 2001 through 2007.
Kobayashi has been ineligible to compete at Nathan’s annual July 4th event since he refused to sign an exclusivity agreement with the Major League of Eating which governs Nathan’s annual July 4th event. Kobayashi is planning on holding his own separate simultaneous hot-dog eating contest on a Manhattan rooftop, sitting beside a big-screen TV showing Nathan’s contest televised live on ESPN.
Women contestants (left to right) Larell Marie Mele, Juliet Lee, Sonya Thomas and Laura Leu appeared for the official weigh-in for Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, sponsored by Pepto-Bismol, during a ceremony at City Hall Park, July 1, 2011 in New York.
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