Hot dog, milk contests stretch stomach capacity

Published 12:00 am Saturday, August 3, 2002

The Freeborn County Fair offers entertainment for everyone. On Friday night you could even watch one of the most disgusting displays of vomiting to grace the beer garden, thanks to Power 96’s chocolate milk chug and raw hot-dog eating contests.

Most of the contestants were lucky enough to be signed up by friends, then drawn at random from a box. First prize for both contests was a recliner from Morris Furniture, runners-up received Valley Fair tickets and third place winners received Cinderella concert tickets.

Twelve people participated in each contest; all received Power 96 T-shirts and were entered in Northstar Power Sports’ drawing for a new ATV.

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Dwight Borland managed to chug his gallon of chocolate milk first, stand up, sit down and hold the milk down for an additional 30 seconds, all within five minutes. The second- and third-place finishers, Jay Behrends and Duane Peterson, finished within the next ten minutes. All the participants initially attacked their gallon, but almost everyone took a significant break after finishing the first quarter of their jug. Most never made it past the halfway point.

Organizers had a more difficult time filling the spots in the raw hot dog-eating contest. More women actually got suckered into volunteering for this one. The contestant who managed to down the most of the cold slippery hot dogs in five minutes was crowned champ. Dan Whelan survived, eating 10 for first place. Jeremy Waters finished nine, and they had to go into a hot dog eat-off to determine the third-place finisher, Jud Bair, who ate seven hot dogs.

Power 96 owner Greg Jensen came up with the idea for the contests. &uot;We just thought it might be fun, something new to try,&uot; Jensen said.