Chicken wings fear Donovan Busta.
They tremble before him.
They're building underground shelters, rationing supplies, trying to mount some kind of resistance.
::. Competetive eater Donovan Busta
But if the world's 27th-ranked competitive eater finds them, all is lost, because here's a man who can eat 120 chicken wings in 10 minutes.
Outside of playing baseball for a short while as a teenager, competitive eating is the only sport that Busta's ever practiced.
"I think that's why I do it," says Busta, 32, an Englewood resident who works at Home Depot when he's not eating competitively. "It's my competitive spirit that I never got to harness when I was a child."
BEAT BUSTA
Think you can handle competitive eating? Here are some of Donovan's accomplishments:
++ "I've eaten a Chipotle burrito in 57 seconds."
++ "I've eaten three Chipotle burritos in eight-and-a-half minutes."
++ "I've done about 120 chicken wings in about a 10-minute span."
++ "I did three-and-a-quarter pounds of cheese fries in five minutes."
++ "I've downed 24 Krystal burgers in eight minutes."
++ "I only did 12-and-a-half cheese sandwiches in Los Angeles, but the cheese was horrible, and that's the thing - you're at the mercy of who ever's preparing the food."
He and other eaters - eaters of wings, oysters, baked beans, whatever - will be competing Saturday in a qualifying round of the GoldenPalace.com Grilled Cheese-Eating Championship at the Taste of Colorado Festival in Denver's Civic Center Park. At stake are $1,750 in prizes and a berth in the finals in Lincoln, Neb. - and a $20,000 grand prize.
Top eaters like Busta are ranked by the International Federation of Competetive Eating. The IFOCE, in addition to promoting and providing organization for the sport, works to keep it safe and maintain integrity, according to president Rich Shea.
"We're sort of the governing body of all stomach-centric sport worldwide," Shea says.
"We rank quarterly," he says, and though the ranking is not scientific, it's respected by the community.
First-ranked eater Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi is written and spoken about with a reverence that says he's the Wayne Gretzky or the Michael Jordan of eating. People don't talk about beating him. They just talk about getting the chance to eat opposite him.
Competetive eating has had trouble getting respect, despite appearances on ESPN and a growing following. Some won't call it a sport.
"I'd honestly fight people tooth-and-nail on that one," Shea says. He's not a competitive eater himself (he calls himself "a social eater"), but he has an appreciation for the game. His attitude swings between being passionate about the game and self-satisfied in its independence. Big, multinational sponsors would help, he says, and so would more television exposure - but that's not to say that the game needs them.
"We've lobbied the Olympics, and we've slowed a little bit," Shea says. "(Eating's) as inherent to man as running and jumping, and those are both in the Olympics."
::. Sonya Thomas, AKA "The Black Widow," is ranked no. 2 internationally. The 100-pound Thomas once ate 44 lobsters in 12 minutes.
Shea says that during the figure skating scandal in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the IFOCE offered the services of their judges, who had no connection to the figure skating world and were experienced in judging international competition. They never heard back.
"We've taken some snubs," Shea says.
The competitors don't let it get to them. Instead, Busta says, they let the competition drive this individual sport. While there is a great deal of camaraderie, certain highly-ranked eaters seem to have targets painted on them.
"Everybody considers Sonya Thomas a nemesis," Busta says.
The entire competitive eating community is aware of the dominance of the Tsunami and Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas. So are an increasing number of competitive eating fans as the sport gains notoriety.
PICK YOUR FAVORITE
Check out profiles of the top-ranked eaters at www.ifoce.com
Here are some sweet excerpts:
++ #7 Tim Janus
His given name is Tim Janus, but to the competitive eating community he is a man of mystery, Eater X, whose face and inner torment is concealed by a mask. Eater X distinguished himself in 2004, performing in pie, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, cannoli, cheesecake and corned beef and cabbage eating contests.
He tied the great Cookie Jarvis in chicken wings and placed second to Eric Booker on two occasions.
This rookie clearly represents the future of competitive eating in style, composure and ability.
++ #15 Crazy Legs Conti
Legs struggled in 2003 to maintain the momentum he showed in 2002, his rookie year. He dropped the oyster eating title to Boyd Bulot in a heart-breaking loss, and had greater difficulty on the hot dog circuit.
However, his perseverance has earned him a greater knowledge of self and a deeper understanding of the game.
Legs lives in the East Village of New York City. He is a bachelor and a window washer by trade. Oyster Productions recently completed a documentary on his eating career, which is airing on A&E.
"They don't chew," says Busta, Colorado's highest-ranked eater.
You also won't catch the Tsunami unleashing 20-foot-tall waves of vomit, or the Black Widow spinning webs of bile, because these professionals keep it down.
"I know Kobayashi never throws it up, and I'm fairly positive Sonya Thomas keeps it in," Busta says of the No. 1 and 2 ranked eaters in the world.
Not just everyone can do that. Busta says that many a competitor hurled after a recent ESPN competitive eating event involving five rounds - cheese fries, spaghetti, chopped salad, potato skins and sampler platter, all from ESPNZone's menu.
Busta has seen them up close and personal on more than one occasion, and he's directly competed with Thomas three times.
"She's beaten me seriously badly in Buffalo at the National Buffalo Wing Festival twice," he says.
Busta says that the 100-pound, 37-year-old Thomas broke the world record for chicken wing eating, then, 20 minutes later, was back in line for more wings.
She's so good that there's speculation she pulls down a six-figure income - just from professional eating. Busta says that prizes for eating contests usually range from $1,500 to $5,000, and bigger events have emerged with the sport's growth, offering prizes of more than $20,000.
Busta, who has a bigger frame than Thomas, prepares for competition by eating large amounts of food days before in order to stretch his stomach out. Then, on the day of the competition, he eats a light breakfast, and in the hour immediately before the contest, he drinks a gallon of water - a common practice among competitive eaters, but still not enough, in most cases, to match the slight Thomas and Kobayashi.
"There's a lot of speculation on why (Thomas) is good," Busta says. "Believe it or not, one of (the reasons) because she's so thin."
Thomas can throw food down her gullet in quantities unimaginable to the average person, and even out of reach for Busta, who once ate three Chipotle burritos in under eight minutes.
"The burritos were the only time when I've ever eaten more than 4 pounds of food at one time," Busta says. "That was an accomplishment for me."
But he says that Thomas wouldn't have stopped there.
"She can put maybe nine to 10, maybe 15 pounds in her stomach at one time."
::. Thomas competes in the Goldenplace.com grilled cheese-eating contest at the taste of Colorado.
If he wants to catch her, he'll have some work to do. The Black Widow has downed 8.31 pounds of Vienna sausages in 10 minutes, 46 dozen oysters - that's 552 - in 10 minutes and 44 Maine lobsters - 11.3 pounds of meat from the shell - in 12 minutes.
"All the guys that I eat with think that I could be the guy to knock her off," Busta says.
