[Emily_Haines]

Coney Island Hot Dog Bun Eating Conest - Coney Island, New York, July 3, 2009

551 Three human competitor team +610
552 Three elephant team -920

I took the three elephant team. Generally I don't like laying this much juice but I feel this has a great chance to win.



Through the eons, the human race has never faced a challenge like this before — an eating contest against elephants!

But Coney Island is bracing for just such an unprecedented spectacle on July 3 with three brave — and perhaps naïve — souls daring to square off in a hot dog bun-eating contest against a trio of pachyderms from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

“The human are hoping that their superior intellect comes into play. For instance they can dunk the rolls in water [to minimize their volume],” said George Shea, the president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the governing body of all stomach-centric sports that is sanctioning the contest at the Ringling Brothers circus site on West 21st Street.

The human gustatory gladiators have another advantage over the gentle vegetarian giants. “Perhaps the elephants won’t understand the word ‘Go,’” Shea speculated.

The rules are simple. Whichever team eats more standard-issue frankfurter rolls in six minutes will be declared victorious. Individual honors will be dispensed on the single creature that stomachs the most starchy carbohydrates.

The odds are clearly in the elephants’ favor.

According to circus handlers, the beasts gorge on 200 pounds of food a day and can devour a loaf of bread, a staple of their diet, in one and a half seconds.

“When most people see elephants, they see the majesty of nature. To me, I see an arrogant animal that needs to be taken down a notch,” said an unabashedly pro-human Shea.

A win for mankind would be a major breakthrough in the world of inter-species eating contests. A Kodiak bear once thrashed six-time hot dog-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi.

The gluttonous grudge match between man and beast comes on the eve of the annual July Fourth Nathan’s hot dog eating contest, an all-human affair that will see a rematch between two-time world champ Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi.

[pico]

.lock

[jjgold]

Who won?

[Emily_Haines]

Told you this was FREE MONEY!

In what may have been humanity’s most humbling day since scientists taught a monkey to communicate by sign language, a trio of elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus defeated three legendary human athletes in a hot dog bun-eating contest in Coney Island this afternoon.

The final tally was as humiliating as it was shocking:

Elephants: 505 hot dogs buns in six minutes.

Humans: 147.

After the spectacle was over and the buns were swept away, it fell to International Federation of Competitive Eating President George Shea to put the event in perspective.

“Am I embarrassed for my species?” Shea asked. “Of course I am. This is as dark a day for humanity as the evening of the Hindenberg crash. But this time, my heart is screaming, ‘Oh, the pachydermity! Oh, the pachydermity.’”

Yet it started out so well for the human trio, Eric “Badlands” Booker, Gravy Brown and Juliet Lee. While the humans hurriedly consumed buns, the elephants appeared to be eating at a much more relaxed pace.

“They are eating with leisurely elan!” Shea screamed at the three-minute mark. “Clearly, they do not have the competitive spirit of their human betters!”

But Shea’s hubris quickly crashed down when the buns were added up. Despite a slow, methodical pace, the elephant team of Bunny, 42, Susie, 46, and Minnie, 48, walloped the competition.

Yes, the loss was hard to take, but for Shea, it was a dream come true.

“As you know, I have had two dreams in life,” he said. “One is to see two competitive eaters enter a convenience store and eat it to the ground, with one starting in the chips aisle and the other starting at the Slushies.

“That dream remains unfulfilled.

“But my other dream was to have a sanctioned eating competition between man and another species — and today that dream became a reality,” he said.

The event was a precursor to the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, at noon on July 4, at the corner of Stillwell and Surf avenues in Coney Island. That event — which features only humans, though all eating inhuman quantities of meat, sodium and starch — will feature a rematch between world champion Joey Chestnut and favorite Takeru Kobayashi of Japan.

[jjgold]

Good Call Emiles

[pico]

nice. if you;re smart, there are free money laying around. i remember there is a prop last year for mlb all star home run contest: will a player hit the ball outside of the yankee stadium. it was pretty much impossible. especially hr contest pitches are not as fast as regular pitches. so that was a easy lock.

also during the uefa finals, there was a prop on 5dimes saying will there be a hattrick. the total for the game was so low, no way anyone can get a hat trick during a defensive match like that.