It's safe to say that if you're a sports fan, you're a fan of a great comeback story. After all, sports history is littered with them. Michael Jordan returning to the basketball court after a year-and-a-half-long attempt to play minor league baseball. Simone Biles making her gymnastics return at the 2023 World Championships and winning Gold. George Foreman stepping away from boxing for ten years, only to come back and win the WBA and IBF Heavyweight Titles as a 45-year-old. CM Punk coming back to WWE after nearly ten years away from the promotion. As of today, the sport of competitive eating has it's defining comeback story, because Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti has bounced back from a decade-long hiatus to win the 2024 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Patrick Bertoletti is a competitive eating mainstay, yet after years of coming up short behind 16-time champion Joey Chestnut, Bertoletti stepped away from the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2012, and wouldn't return until 2022. In the meantime, “Deep Dish” set numerous competitive eating world records, including 47 slices of pizza in ten minutes, 9.17 pounds of blueberry pie in eight minutes, 4.1 pounds of chicken wings in eight minutes, 1.75 pounds of ice cream in eight minutes, 4 pounds and 12 ounces of turkey meat in 12 minutes, among many others. But finally, after a career that has spanned nearly 20 years, Bertoletti finally captured the biggest prize in competitive eating… the Mustard Belt.
After years of being the proverbial bridesmaid — Deep Dish had top three Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest finishes in 2007 (49 hot dogs and buns), 2009 (55 HDBs), 2010 (37 HDBs), 2011 (53 HDBs) and 2012 (51 HDBs) — Patrick Bertoletti came away with the win this year, eating a personal best 58 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes on Thursday afternoon. 58 was the lowest winning total since 2010, but still enough to capture the coveted championship belt.
“I wasn't going to stop eating until the job was done,” Bertoletti said after winning the contest, per the Associated Press. “With Joey not here, I knew I had a shot.”
Why did Joey Chestnut miss the 2024 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating contest?
After winning 16 of the previous 17 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contests, competitive eating icon/American hero Joey Chestnut did not compete in the 2024 competition due to a sponsorship conflict. Chestnut signed a deal with Impossible Foods, a plant-based competitor of Nathan's, earlier this year, and thus was banned from the 4th of July competition in Coney Island. But Chestnut will still eat his share of hot dogs today, as he'll be competing against soldiers at a U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas.
Since 2001, only four men have won the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest — Chestnut, Matt Stonie (who stunned Chestnut in 2015), Bertoletti, and Takeru Kobayashi, the first legend of competitive eating, and a notable rival of Chestnut. Chestnut and Kobayashi will renew their rivalry one last time this September, when they face off in a hot dog eating competition, streaming exclusively on Netflix.
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