Competitive Eaters Are Just Like Us. Give or Take a Dozen Hot Dogs.

Day to day, Julie Goldberg eats in a manner that could be described as “exceedingly normal.” She finishes her salad. She does not eat her pizza crust. You’d have no idea that Ms. Goldberg, 38, is a competitive eater in training to eat, if not the most hot dogs in history, then the most hot dogs that she has eaten in her life.

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They walk among us, these titans of caloric consumption: construction workers and school superintendents, farmers and accountants. The difference is that every July 4, the best of them flock to Coney Island for the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

This year, the field is unexpectedly open. Last month, Joey Chestnut, the contest’s 16-time champion, was barred from competition after signing an endorsement deal with Impossible Foods. Immediately after the news broke, it was announced that he would go head-to-head with his longtime rival, Takeru Kobayashi, in a Netflix special — “Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef” — to air live on Sept. 2. (Mr. Kobayashi, who holds the world record for downing bunless hot dogs, has not been allowed to compete in the contest since 2010, owing to a contract dispute with Major League Eating, the governing body of the Nathan’s event.)

The vast majority of elite eaters are not signing endorsement deals or getting Netflix specials. But they form the backbone of what is not just a sport but an American tradition.

Even eating 6.75 hot dogs in 10 minutes — a recent qualifying total — requires dedicated training.Credit…Jonno Rattman for The New York Times