The Contest

The urge to compete has spawned a diverse set of contests.

People love competition. That’s why sports viewing is so popular, and participating in sports activities as well, I suppose; and, crafting elaborate excuses to skip out of high school gym class - well, that last one probably has nothing to do with competing, but, you get the idea: Yay sports! There are winners, and there are losers - the outcome represents a very clean, binary result. The same can generally be said regarding political campaigns.

But, political campaigns are not the most unusual contests developed to slake our thirst for competition. Oh no!

Let’s attack the elephant in the room head-on: The title of this column, “The Contest,” is also the title of an episode in the long-running sitcom, Seinfeld. Those of you who are Seinfeld devotees know exactly what the episode is about, and, for the uninitiated, allow me to describe the focus of the competition in the most delicate way I am able: The four main characters (Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine) enter into a contest to determine who among them is able to forestall engaging in the practice of sexual self-satisfaction for the longest period of time. George is purportedly the winner of the contest (based entirely on the honor system), but in a later episode appears to indicate that he cheated. Absolutely one of the more off-beat contests devised by man.

Another unusual contest, significantly alluded to in the picture which appears atop this column is the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, which has been won sixteen times by Joey Chestnut, who appears in the picture. Although Chestnut is the all-time champion of the event, having downed seventy-six hot dogs (and buns) in the prescribed 10-minute contest timeframe in the 2021 contest, he is not the current reigning champion, because he was banned from the 2024 competition, due to his having signed an endorsement deal with Impossible Food, a marketer of plant-based food products, including hot dogs. That’s right, Chestnut was excluded from the contest because he was promoting a healthier product than the garden-variety hot dog, which thehumaneleague.org tells us typically includes: emulsified meat trimmings, ascorbic acid/sodium ascorbate, autolyzed yeast extract, beef stock, celery powder, cherry powder, citric acid, collagen casing, dextrose, flavoring, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, lactate/diacetate, lauric arginate, maltodextrin, modified food starch, monosodium glutamate (MSG), natural sheep casing (made from lamb intestines), paprika extract, phosphates, salt, smoke flavoring, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrate, sorbitol, soy protein concentrate, spices, sugar and corn syrup, water and yeast extract. Yum!

As a teenage boy in the 1970’s, I enjoyed a steady diet of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, a Saturday afternoon TV program, which featured coverage of sports not widely televised, including: rodeo, curling, jai alai, powerlifting, surfing, lumberjack competitions, bowling, demolition derby, barrel jumping, Mexican cliff diving and badminton. Who can forget the show’s opening montage, contrasting “the thrill of victory” with the “agony of defeat,” personified by Slovenian ski jumper, Vinko Bogataj’s crash in 1970 - ouch!

One of the recurring annual features on ABC’s Wide World of Sports was the “World’s Wrist Wrestling Championship,” conducted each year in Petaluma, California, elevating an activity created to settle barroom arguments to a respected international sport; I’m surprised that wrist wrestling has not yet found its way to the Olympics roster of contests.

ABC also aired another unusual competition, beginning in the 1970’s: The Superstars, a competition in which ten athletes from different sports were assembled to compete in ten different sports activities, including tennis, bowling, swimming, biking, golf, weightlifting, baseball hitting, table tennis (that’s ping-pong to you and me), a 100-yard dash and a half-mile run. An Olympic pole vaulter, Bob Seagren, won the initial competition, and a soccer player, Kyle Rote, Jr., won three of the next four contests; O.J. Simpson won the other one. The best part of the show, to me, was the obstacle course component, watching oversized football players and other athletes trying to squeeze themselves through a narrow tunnel and climb a wall with a rope. Others might argue that seeing boxer Joe Frazier almost drown while trying to swim was a highlight. I suspect we won’t be seeing reruns of this show, because, you know. . .O.J. - it’s the same reason Hertz Rent-A-Car has gone in a different direction with their creative advertising campaigns. That friggin’ O.J. - he’s ruined everything, man!

A related ABC spinoff series, Battle of the Network Stars, mimicked The Superstars’ winning formula, but with a twist: the participants were actors on TV programs on the three existing TV networks at the time (ABC, CBS and NBC), who possessed no discernable sports performance skills whatsoever. The highlight of this one was the tug-of-war event - again, puzzling to me why the Olympics has not yet dialed-in this compelling sporting event. And, I can find no evidence of O.J. or Robert Blake appearing in this contest, so, perhaps reruns can be made available.

There are certainly other contests you can name, which are not considered to be mainstream events; some of these include: the World Beard and Moustache Championships, the North American Wife Carrying Championships, the Mobile Phone Throwing Championships, England’s Great Knaresborough Bed Race, the Peashooting Championship (also in England, naturally), the World Toe-Wrestling Championships (you guessed it, England’s answer to Petaluma’s World’s Wrist Wrestling Championship), the Rolling in the Grits Championship, the Underwater World Hockey Championships, the Amateur World Championship of Chessboxing (apparently, a mashup of chess and boxing - no, seriously) and the International Cherry Pit-Spitting Championship. I, for one, am very curious about the Rolling in the Grits Championship, if only for the opportunity to visit St. George, South Carolina.

I have to imagine that covers most of the unusual contests conducted for people. I know what you’re thinking: What about dogs? Is there no nationally-sanctioned competition for dock-diving dogs?

Well, you’re in luck - the AKC Diving Dogs Challenge is conducted annually, and the current recordholder is a whippet named Sounder. Now, he’s no Bob Seagren, or Kyle Rote, Jr. or even O.J., but, I bet he could have held his own in the Superstars competition - I mean, clearly he could have bested Joe Frazier in the pool.

Do you think we’ve missed any unusual contests in this recounting? Please feel free to educate us in the comments section below.

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