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Saturday, July 12, 2008

 


Alex Nye: Ready, Set, Eat
While Olympic athletes are off practicing for this summer's Olympic games in Bejing, other athletes are training hard for events that are equally enduring and testing.

The men and women from the IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) are diligently working toward their own goals of bigger, fatter, stronger. However, for all they put their bodies through, they are neither recognized nor lionized for their expansive gastronomical achievements.

And it's a shame.

I consider myself an authority because 1) I have been very involved in their group and 2) who is going to tell me I am not an authority? The editors? Ha ha! It's my column and I can do what I want.

Anyway, my first experience with the IFOCE was three years ago when it was in Buffalo for the Wing Festival. There was a competition called the Battle of the Buffet. It was a race to see who could eat the most food in a certain amount of time.

For 10 minutes, the athletes bend forward and stuff their faces with a semi-implausible mixture, which includes wings, beef on weck, pirogues, and cannoli. It is grueling. Their scrunched-up expressions give the impression that they are going through tremendous pain, as if they were giving birth to a small horse.

Like the Olympics, these events are a close sprint to the finish. And like the Olympics, there are often great controversies.

I am speaking from experience here. Just last week, I was involved in a chicken wing eating contest at Byrncliff Resort, in Wyoming County. To make it clear, it was an amateur event, not IFOCE sanctioned. But perhaps it should have been.

My dad and I signed up for the contest well in advance. We gave ourselves a few weeks to practice eating wings and memorize the rules. The eating came naturally, but the rules seemed rather stringent.

For example, the rules stated that if you did not clean your wing before going to the next one, you would be disqualified. (Throwing up was also grounds for disqualification.) We were slightly nervous about this rule because it was so subjective: how do you determine what a cleaned wing is? Do you have to get all the gristle? The only thing we could do was wait until the day of the contest and ask the judge for an official ruling.

When we got to Byrncliff for the show, things were quite frantic. There was a lot going on at the restaurant and people were running around to get everything prepared. My father finally located a woman running the competition, who told us that we would be briefed right before the start of the contest.

With questions and concerns still floating around, we did what anyone would do: we ordered dinner. There was more than an hour until the eating and we were bored. Over a sandwich, we discussed eating strategies and theories.

We came to the conclusion that you should start with the small legs first and use a spinning method. You could chew and chomp and store the food in the side of your cheeks, a technique called chipmunking.

With the wings, you could go one of two ways. The more daring approach would be to stuff the whole wing in your mouth, clamp down, and then pull it out, ala cartoons. It works well, but is risky. The other way is to tear off the top and bottom layers and push the middle meat out with your fingers.

Even after dinner, my father and I were both feeling confident. We knew our plan of attack, but were still wondering about what constitutes a clean wing.

The "briefing" we finally received was just that, brief. The singer from a band playing under a tent read the rules as they were told to us on the forms we filled out. He did not expound and we had no time to ask questions. We began eating.

Almost immediately into the competition, controversy started. The reigning champ, a guy called Duffman, was hounded by the crowd to finish his wings. There were a few from the audience who were yelling to Duffman to "clean your wings."

I could not see what was going on, but I could determine that whatever it was, something was askew. Overall, in the five-minute sprint to see who could eat the most wings, Duffman won by seven wings. He ate 32, which was nearly double third place.

Let me just state: I appreciate the fact that it was Byrncliff's second annual wing contest. I love the fact that they would sponsor such an event; I had a great time doing it; and I hope to do it again next year. However, Byrncliff needs to establish some ground rules first.

For one, they should declare the winner by the amount eaten, in terms of weight. Not all wings are equal and, consequently, not all people clean their wings the same. To rectify the situation, they should weigh every tray before and after the competition. That way they would be able to know exactly who really ate the most.

Am I a sore loser? Perhaps. But the way I see it, I am just trying to level out the playing field. It would be equivalent to Michael Phelps losing the 100-meter freestyle by seven body lengths because the other guys got flippers.

Alex Nye lives in East Aurora. Tales of his adventures appear regularly in the Advertiser. Related Items

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