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Nevada couple is a force in world of competitive gorging
By CRYSTAL PETROCELLI
GET OUT
If gobbling up 5 pounds of birthday cake in 11 minutes sounds like a dream come true, try eating 16 “absolutely horrendous” hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes.
That’s how Carlene LeFevre, the winner of the 2003 and 2004 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contests in Tempe, describes the dogs she plans to choke down Saturday at the Arizona Mills event.
LeFevre, who is the world’s seventh-ranked competitive eater, is one part of a two-headed power-eating couple from Henderson, Nev. The other half is her husband, Richard, who is ranked third in the world.
The retired couple, who are both 5-foot-6 and weigh “the appropriate amount,” got into competitive eating thanks to a 15-year tradition of winning a free 72-ounce steak dinner by polishing it off in under an hour.
Since July 4, they’ve earned a combined $30,000.
Q: First things first: How the heck do you not weigh two tons?
Carlene: Ninety percent of the time, there’s no grease, no sugar, no fat (in our diet). It’s religiously, just absolutely spartan.
Richard: We eat such high-fiber diets that that helps push everything through, so you probably don’t absorb all the bad calories.
Q: What’s it like competing?
Carlene: You just don’t eat — you wolf it, you cram it, you push it in, you soak it and you squeeze it and you shove it in there, and you practically swallow things whole. You’ve got to chew it enough to get it down your tube, but you don’t have time to chew it all the way.
Q: Sounds intense.
Richard: It is very intense. And a lot of people think it’s easy. They’ll say, "Oh, I can do that." Like William Perry (a former player with the Chicago Bears) thought it was easy, and he found out it wasn’t.
Carlene: Perry’s a big eater; he loves to eat. He thought, "Oh, wow, get in a contest to eat, wow." And he’s huge, and what did he eat, four hot dogs?
Richard: He’s always bragging about how much he can eat.
Carlene: And what did he eat, a quarter of the cake?
Richard: I don’t even think he had a quarter of the cake.
Carlene: I think he had one big piece and that was it.
Q: What do you enjoy about competitive eating?
Carlene: The limo waits for you at the airport. It’s great to come off an airplane and see a limo driver with your name. Many comps, many free trips, hotels paid. If TV shows want us to do a TV show, they pay our airfare, comp us all of our meals, pay the hotel.
Q: Do you consider it a sport?
Richard: In the beginning, I laughed when people said that because I didn’t consider it a sport, but now I do.
Carlene: But I wouldn’t consider us athletes.
Richard: No, we’re not athletes, but we are sportsmen or sportspeople. It’s a sporting event. It requires mental toughness and fortitude and focus.
Q: What’s the atmosphere like at an event?
Carlene: It’s loud. You hear grunting, you hear heavy breathing and (the eaters) make a lot of noise. In the posole contest, I was moaning out loud. Actually moaning. I thought I was gonna die, and I won. I couldn’t believe it!
Q: What are the crowds like?
Carlene: Usually there’s a large crowd, and of course, people always like to see grossness. Grossness and sex and filth sells. There’s no sex or filth in competitive eating, unless somebody pukes. But, I mean, people love to see people make a spectacle of themselves — cheeks all pooched out, food on your arms and food on your wrists and water running down and dripping off your elbows.
Q: What’s the toughest thing about competitive eating?
Carlene: The actual 12 minutes. Rich claims that sometimes he enjoys it. For me, the actual 12 minutes is a grueling experience. The day before, the day after and the actual 12 minutes are the hardest for me.
Q: What’s the hardest food to eat fast?
Richard: The hardest food we’ve ever eaten is, well, I was going to say Spam because out of the can, that’s pretty gross.
Carlene: Oh, it’s terrible. It’s the only time we’ve gotten sick. What did I eat, five blocks of Spam?
Richard: Yeah, and I ate almost seven.
Carlene: He came in first; I came in second. We gnawed it like a chipmunk. It was slimy and salty. It was so salty that even by the first bite I thought, "Oh my God, this is horrendous." I almost didn’t make it to the motel room. It just bounced right out of my stomach.
Q: Have you been on ESPN?
Richard: I’ve been on ESPN a few times. In fact, I was just on last week when I ate a (5-pound) birthday cake in New York City. They had me on ‘‘SportsCenter’’ all night. I went up against (Perry) . . . I blasted him right off the stage.
Q: Do you ever go out to dinner and splurge?
Carlene: Once in a while we will. But when we first moved here five years ago, we both gained weight because we just went crazy on the buffets, absolutely like kids in Disneyland. Because the buffets here are to die for, and then after that I said, "Well, I can’t do that." So Rich and I finally decided that once in a while we will splurge and go out and just eat like crazy people.
Richard: I’ll go and have pasta and have three or four big plates ... Once a month, I’ll go in and eat pancakes. Like just last week I ate 28 pancakes and had lots of other stuff, too.
Q: So when you’re not pounding posole, what do you do for fun?
Carlene: We bungee jump, we’ve done the white-water rafting, we climbed the Great Wall of China, we rode donkeys to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We’re adrenaline junkies, and we love to do things where you could die but you don’t die. What a rush!
Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest Where: Arizona Mills, 5000 S. Arizona Mills Circle, Tempe
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
Cost: Free
Info: www.NathansFamous.com
WANT TO COMPETE?
If you’re 18 years or older, you can test your eating skills Saturday. The Arizona Mills event is a qualifying round to compete in the famed Coney Island contest on July 4. The winner of that event will receive an all-expense-paid trip to New York City and represent the United States at the international eating contest. If you’re interested, register by visiting www.NathansFamous.com or calling .
RICHARD LEFEVRE'S WORLD RECORDS
Birthday cake: Five pounds in 11 minutes, 26 seconds
Chili: 1 gallons in 10 minutes
Corn dogs: 12 corn dogs in 10 minutes
Spam: Six pounds in 12 minutes
Tex-Mex rolls: 30 rolls in 12 minutes
Watermelon: 11 pounds in 15 minutes
CARLENE LEFEVRE'S WORLD RECORD
Posole: 109.75 ounces in 12 minutes
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