NEW YORK — Patrick Bertoletti gobbled up 58 hot dogs to win his first men’s title Thursday at the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, taking advantage of the absence of the event’s biggest star. In the women’s competition, defending champion Miki Sudo won her 10th title and set a new world record by downing 51 links.
Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the reigning men’s champion and winner of 16 out of 17 previous competitions, didn’t attend this year over a sponsorship tiff. Instead he competed later in the day against four soldiers at a U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas, where he wolfed down 57 hot dogs in five minutes.
Bertoletti, 39, of Chicago, won in a tight, 10-minute race where the leader bounced back and forth, defeating 13 competitors from around the world. He said he lost weight and practiced for three months with “an urgency” to prepare for the event, thinking he had a good chance of winning.
“With Joey not here, I knew I had a shot,” Bertoletti said. “I was able to unlock something that I don’t know where it came from.”
Bertoletti bested his prior record of 55 hot dogs at the event, which is held every Independence Day on New York’s Coney Island, a beachfront destination with amusement parks and a carnivalesque summer…
