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Competitive eating: Eater X marks the spot

Published: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 5:28 PM CDT

Tim Janus, Joey Chestnut set for tamale-eating competition in Lewisville

By Justin Thomas, jthomas@starlocalnews.com

The menu at Dat's Good BBQ in Lewisville features "tamale Wednesday," where patrons can chow down on a dozen tamales for just $10.

Eating that amount Saturday, though, will get you laughed off the steps of Lewisville City Hall when the 8th annual World Tamale Eating Championship takes place.

The event features the planet's biggest bottomless pits, including world No. 1 Joey Chestnut and No. 3-ranked defending champion Tim "Eater X" Janus, who will take aim at the world record for tamales eaten within 12 minutes during the Lewisville Western Days Festival.

The event, organized by the Lewisville Convention and Visitors Bureau and officially sanctioned by Major League Eating, will pay a total purse of $3,500 to the top six finishers. The contest will start at 1 p.m. from City Hall (51 W. Church Street) with registration taking place online at ifoce.com.

Janus, a resident of New York and graduate of SMU, currently holds the tamale world record at 71 and is a four-time event champion, taking top honors last year as well as in 2006, '07 and '10.

"The tamale completion gets a lot of attention from myself and some of the other eaters," Janus said. "It's pretty straight forward to eat and there isn't a ton you can do with them.

"Personally, I like the tamale and foods where you can eat a lot of them in a short amount of time. To me, the biggest part of competitive eating is not your speed but your capacity."

Janus got his start in competitive eating in the early 2000s and hasn't looked back.

"I always thought I could eat a lot and then I started reading about contests back in 2003 or 2004," he said. "At the time, I was a day-trader and it was really depressing to work so hard and not see the results. So I thought I needed a vacation and I saw something about an eating competition coming up. I figured it would be a cheap little one-day vacation I could take, so I gave it a shot. By the time I finished, I had a great time and I left the competition thinking I could really do much better. It went from there.

"It's really shocking because it started as a really small thing and now it's a big deal. I'm surprised by it all and now I've been eating competitively for 8.5 years and I've been able to travel all over the world."

Janus says he takes part in competitive eating contests about 15 times per year and credits Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, N.Y. for paving the way for competitive eaters.

"I think that's the reason for the rise in popularity and is the reason most of us heard about or got into competitive eating," he said. "It put our sport on the map and was the catalyst for what has happened the last 10 years."

The tamale competition is one of Janus' favorite events.

"Items like chicken wings or ribs and other foods that are more labor intensive I don't do as much," he said. "I like to eat large amounts where you can see your competitors hit the wall and drop off. That's the ultimate test."

After eight years of competition, Janus doesn't train for events as much as he used, in particular if he knows he can't get the exact product he will be eating.

"If I know exactly what it is, then I can buy the product and kind of experiment with the best ways to eat it," he said. "But that's not usually the case. With the tamale, it can be totally different depending on what you get, so there isn't much preparation."

Janus, who works as a waiter when not competing, hasn't had any weight issues since he began eating for a living.

"It really isn't that big of a deal," he said. "If you're good about taking care of yourself and staying disciplined in what you eat otherwise, then one contest every few weeks isn't that big."

Janus added that he prefers events that take place during the day so he his hunger isn't building throughout.

"The late ones are harder not to starve yourself for," he said. "I don't like having to wait that long because you still need to eat something to have some energy. I try to not eat a lot of solid foods during the day, but the night before I don't really worry about it."

Janus often wants to eat in the immediate hours following a competition.

"Usually, by the end of the next day or night, I am feeling back to normal," he said. "But that night, even though I am stuffed, I still want to eat. And I usually want to eat something different. If you eat 50 or so tamales, you want to get that taste out. If you just ate a salty food, you're usually craving something sugary and fresh."

Competing alongside Janus and Chestnut will be No. 7-ranked Adrian Morgan of Baton Rouge, LA; New York's Yasir Salem (No. 22) and "Nasty" Nate Biller of Wichita Falls (No. 25), among others. Biller has in the top five five times, including a second-place finish in 2009 when he ate 42 tamales. Levi Oliver remains the only Texan to win the world title in tamales, a feat he accomplished in the inaugural event in 2005.

"Most of the eaters that are highly-ranked know each other pretty well from the different competitions," Janus said. "We've spent time together and are friendly. But at the same time, you are competing against them, so there are different degrees of friendliness. That's the trick is figuring out how much because they are people you are competing against and money is involved."

As is often the case, Chestnut appears to be one of Janus' chief competitors.

"He's a great eater," Janus said. "I would rather not have to go against him. I prefer the path of least resistance. I feel that gets a bad wrap sometimes. But that's not up to me and I am going to give it my best."

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