Rules
Only adults 18 years or older who fulfill one of the following four conditions may compete:
- The defending champion
- Winners of a regional qualifying contest for that season
- Qualifying as one of two wildcards (highest two average qualifier scores without winning a single qualifier)
- Special invitation by IFOCE (see "Controversies" below)
The International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) has sanctioned the event since 1997. Today, only entrants currently under contract by the IFOCE can compete in the contest.
Rules used in the early years of the contest were different from today's. For example, in past contests minors could compete (Birgit Felden from West Germany was age 17 when she won the 1984 contest.)
During the event, the field of about 20 contestants stands on a raised platform behind a 30-foot (9.1 m)-long table with drinks and Nathan's Famous hot dogs in buns. Most contestants drink water, but other kinds of drinks can and have been used. Condiments are allowed, but are usually not used. The hot dogs themselves are allowed to cool slightly after grilling to prevent possible mouth burns. In the past, whoever consumed (and kept down until the contest had ended) the most hot dogs and buns ("HDBs") in 12 minutes was declared the winner. Starting in 2008, however, the contest has been only 10 minutes due to the idea that the supposed original contest in 1916 was this length. A designated scorekeeper is paired with each contestant. The IFOCE official flips a number board counting the hot dogs consumed. Partially eaten hot dogs count and the granularity of measurement is eighths of a length. Hot dogs still in the mouth at the end of the 10 minutes count only if they are swallowed. Yellow cards can be issued for "messy eating," and disqualification can occur for "reversal of fortune."
After the winner is declared, a plate with the number of hot dogs eaten by the winner is brought out for photo opportunities.
Read more about this topic: Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest
Famous quotes containing the word rules:
“Children can’t make their own rules and no child is happy without them. The great need of the young is for authority that protects them against the consequences of their own primitive passions and their lack of experience, that provides with guides for everyday behavior and that builds some solid ground they can stand on for the future.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are Nature sill, but Nature methodized;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)