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Known for his iron stomach and for his immense success in the competitive-eating circuit, Geoffrey Esper will once again be gorging in Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest.
The annual event is Saturday, July 4, at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.
Esper, 51, of Oxford, is a teacher at Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Charlton. He has finished second in the event four times. A year ago he placed fourth.
Like other competitors at Coney Island, Esper will have to out-chomp reigning champ Nathan's champ Joey Chestnut. A year ago, Chestnut won his 17th Fourth of July event.
This year, the men’s contest will be shown on ABC beginning at 12:30 p.m.
While Esper's total of 44 hot dogs in 10 minutes was impressive in 2025, it wasn’t even in the same ballpark to Chestnut's herculean digestive system. He woofed down a kennel of 70.5 dogs.
“That day is a pretty big payday for him, so he puts in a lot of effort into training for this contest. But he doesn’t win every single contest,” Esper said in an interview with the Telegram & Gazette Wednesday, July 1. “It did happen to him one year. He lost to Matt Stonie (in 2015).”
Not only do you need an iron stomach, Esper said, you need a clear head, which might be Chestnut’s Achilles' heel.
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“He (Chestnut) is very susceptible to psychological tricks,” Esper said. “At this point, the gap is so big that it’s not going to matter. But other contests, you can definitely play with his head.”
Chestnut, who had previously signed a contract that called for him to endorse only Nathan’s hot dogs, did not participate in 2024 after signing a deal to endorse a plant-based wiener made by Impossible Foods.
As a result, 2024 was Esper’s best opportunity yet to win the coveted Mustard Belt.
That year, Esper did achieve his personal best to date – 53 hot dogs with buns in 10 minutes. But he was still five shy of Patrick Bertoletti’s total of 58 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes.
So what’s Esper’s gut feeling about his chances this year?
“It’s not going to happen, especially with Joey there. He has a 99.99% chance to win this,” Esper said. “A couple years ago I did have a chance of winning and I ended up getting second that year. But with Joey in the mix, there’s almost no chance of anybody else winning. Plus, there are some other good competitors as well. There’s Pat Bertoletti and Jay Webb and Nick Wehry.”
Esper, who uses Crystal Light drink mix as the concoction for dunking his hot dog buns, certainly knows how to non-discriminatorily eat.
He said: “A lot of people get real upset about those soggy buns. The contest is nothing about taste. But I will say that the Nathan’s Hot Dogs taste pretty good as far as hot dogs go.”
When asked how one stumbles into the world of competitive eating, Esper said, “Most people do it the exact same way. They watch ‘Man v. Food’ on TV and they want to give it a try. I think you naturally have to be a big eater to begin with to have any type of chance. Then, obviously you have to get into practicing and training and things like that.”
A month out from the fierce frankfurter fight, Esper starts doing “hot dog practices” in preparation for the big contest. Typically, he can go through 500 dogs during training.
“You set up pretty much like the contest is set up,” Esper said. “You set up all your hot dogs that you think you’re going to get through and then you set the clock at 10 minutes and then you go at it.”
When asked if there is a point that he stops eating completely before a competition to make room for a warehouse of wieners, Esper said, “I don’t fast before the contest because I’ll get tired if I don’t eat anything. So I will have a couple hundred calories in the morning and some coffee and stuff like that.”
When he’s not woofing down dogs professionally, Esper is an electronics teacher at Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Charlton.
In addition to holding bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Clark University, Esper holds 19 world-eating records including downing 23.75 pounds of strawberry shortcake in eight minutes to take his fourth title in the Mattituck Strawberry Shortcake-Eating Contest; for devouring 281 wings in 10 minutes in the Hooters wing-eating championships; and for eating 235 Donettes in six minutes in the World Hostess Donettes Eating Championship.
Instead of offering him a Rolaids tablet or other over-the-counter relief for heartburn or acid indigestion, the Oxford Board of Selectmen in Town Hall gave Esper a certificate of recognition for his eating endeavors.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Teacher Geoffrey Esper eyes Nathan's hot dog title
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