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Carnage At Carmine's |
The International Federation of Competitive Eaters (www.IFOCE.com) held their 2nd annual World Meatball Eating Championship at Carmine's in The Quarter at Tropicana. This year's title went to the defending champion, Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas who once again beat out a field of the best and hungriest eaters around. 
Last year, Sonya won the title by eating 89 meatballs with a combined weight of about 6 pounds. Competitors who took the last year to train and set 6 pounds as their target fell short again this year as Sonya ate a staggering 10.3 pounds of meatballs in 12 minutes.
 For the uninitiated, Sonya is just a hair over five feet tall and is listed at 105 pounds. Do the mathyes, she ate about 10% of her total body weight. With some of the competitors tipping the scales at over 300 pounds, most of them could fit three or four Sonyas in one of their shirts.
More impressive (or nauseating depending on your outlook) is that the competitors, officially called "gurgitators" by the IFOCE, shoveled/facilitated/processed the aforementioned meatballs by crushing them rather than eating them whole, or "apple-style". This contributed to the increased totals over last year and is the main reason this writer won't be able to look at a meatball until June or July.
 The most amazing fact might well be that a vegetarian, an apparently confused gentleman named Bob Shoudt, finished in third place at 7.6 pounds in 12 minutes. Memo to Bob: they weren't Gardenballs.
According to an official statement from the IFOCE, by winning this competition and others Sonya is "Cementing her spot at the top of the American meatscape". We here at CityAtlantic can't argue with that. She surely is the Lance Armstrong or Michael Jordan of meatballs.
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