I just discovered that the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) is a very formal looking organization which supervises and regulates competitive eating around the world. The event today at Milanos on Fresno’s beautiful Fulton Mall had absolutely nothing to do with this organization.
Nor did today’s event look anything like those NBC Dateline specials highlighting the reign of Takeru Kobayashi, the world famous diminutive Japanese competitive eater. Anytime I have ever seen these televised spectacles the “athletes” have been infused with the energy and speed of Kentucky Derby thoroughbred.
There were no thoroughbreds to be found among the four eaters at Milanos, but god bless ’em…they did look like they were in pain. The event was the Megazone Challenge and four local bloggers went ‘belly to belly’ to see who could eat a huge pie size calzone the fastest. Also up for the taking, the 17 minute record held by some guy no one could remember. (I actually never ever want to meet that guy).
Small crowd of local web roamers showed up to enjoy watching what ended up being quite an agonizing show.
Check out the video to see for yourself.
In the end, Ed Stewart was victorious, and with a time over 30 minutes the old record seems safe for a while.
My take away from this whole event…never under ANY circumstances…volunteer for a competitive eating challenge.
But for those of you that really feel competitive eating has a place in Fresno, the IFOCE is actively mandated “to study and encourage the development of new categories of competitive eating, specifically with investigation into the possibility of a liquid-centric event, excluding soup or alcohol”. With all the dairies in the area, how about the Fresno “Mega-Nacho Cheese Challenge” or the Fresno “Mega-Yogurt Challenge”? Just sayin’!
The Silver Lining 
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