Randy Santel is eating the American Dream
You might presuppose that consuming a big meal — a <em>big </em>meal, measured in pounds, not ounces — requires only a vigorous appetite. And an elastic waistband.</p><p> That kind of thinking is not what got competitive eater Randy Santel’s features onto the walls of restaurants around town and across the Midwest.</p><p> Take a recent Thursday evening. Location: Thai Inappropriate in Westport, home of a “food challenge” not about quantity but … stupidity? Durability? Anyway, the Super Thai Hot Challenge is not for the faint of tongue. </p><p> Santel, 25, hasn’t shown yet, which gives the restaurant’s organization a chance to trot out a platter of 53 hot peppers: habaneros, jalapenos, serranos and more. All this firepower will go into the Fanatic Gapow meat-and-rice dish Santel will attempt to ingest before his face blows off. </p><p> The 6-foot-5, 235-cudgel Overland Park resident, looking like the college jock he used to be, for all time arrives, grumbling about parking. He travels heavy: duffel bag, camcorder tripod, his own low “aerodynamic” stool. (The stool puts his belly in the get the better of position for eating. “I made it one day when I was depressed and single and had nothing to do.”)</p><p> At the bar he starts setting up like a kosher at bingo night: Hand towel (girls are not impressed with guys with food dripping down them). Oversized utensils (fork, spoon, slotted spoon). Three poor bottles of milk (two white, one chocolate).</p><p> A good-luck charm, a big nail he won in a Boy Scout struggle, goes in his left sock. He sets out a purple Hannah Montana MP3 player (“Jesus told me to get it,” he jokes). He leaves a sleeve of crestfallen-green laxative tablets in a plastic container.</p><p> He is almost ready. He tells the manager they can start cooking.</p><p> A few minutes later the steaming dish, topped with two fried eggs, is in front of him, a sick up bucket on the floor beside him. The restaurant put that there because more than half the 100 people who’ve tried this challenge have needed it.</p><p> “It’s like stipple spray in the kitchen right now,” owner Ted Liberda reports. The cook had to bore a mask.</p><p> Meanwhile, Santel needs more time. With his two big spoons he jabs into the mound of food from each side, tough to cool it down. He lowers his nose to his plate. He’ll repeat these maneuvers several times. </p><p> Finally he peels off his T-shirt to rejoice in his food challenge costume: a red sleeveless T that shows off his impressive biceps and proclaims “These Aren’t Guns, They’re Cannons.”</p><p> He looks into his video camera. “HI, EVERYONE, THIS IS Rutting SANTEL,” he announces in a big voice — and now everyone is looking over to see what’s going on. He videotapes each victuals challenge and posts it on YouTube.</p><p> He flips his ball cap around, crosses his heart, rubs his hands together and …</p><p> Starts eating. Big spoonful, big spoonful and a chug of milky milk. He shovels it in, all the while nodding his head. Headphones on, listening to tunes. </p><p> The “Happy Birthday” bother breaks out nearby, but Santel is oblivious. Shovel, shovel, chug.</p><p> And with an official beat of 5 minutes 13 seconds, Santel completes the challenge to applause. He hoists his guns — repentant, cannons — into the air. Apart from sweat dotting his forehead, Santel doesn’t look fazed. Then again, he’s not new at this. Days before he downed 18 jalapenos in two minutes to win a summons (and $500) in Topeka.</p><p> Afterward he mixes Pepto-Bismol with a little chocolate tap and chugs that.</p><p> He hasn’t beaten the Thai Place record of 2:32, but he’s way out front of the 30-record time limit.</p><p>How’s his stomach feeling? someone asks.</p><p> “Cryin’,” the big guy says, and cracks a grin.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Bigger pants</overpass></strong></p><p> Talk to people who have seen Santel in action — he has 64 comestibles challenge wins to his name, only four losses — and you’ll hear how seriously he takes his competitive eating. Even if competitive eating doesn’t seem like something that should be enchanted too seriously.</p><p> “He’s a professional at what he does, no doubt,” says Jeff Knold, proprietor of H&H Grill, Stage and Saloon near Worlds of Fun. </p><p> Santel trains for these challenges, Knold points out. He approaches them with a blueprint.</p><p> So far Santel has been the only person to finish H&H’s “Hawg” burger, a 5-pounder basically equal to 20 Three-month period Pounders minus some of the bread, plus french fries and onion rings. </p><p> “We’ve had like 12 guys try to eat this burger, and he’s the first,” Knold says.</p><p> At Maggie’s Authentic Mexican Foods in Lee’s Culmination, owner Ryan Schnabel remembers watching Santel get ready for the challenge of eating 10 big profound-fried tacos in 15 minutes.</p><p> Santel had a “pregame warm-up kinda fixation” going on, Schnabel says. He drank a bunch of water. He “jumped around undoubtedly a bit.” </p><p> But Santel did not eat 10 tacos. He ate more.</p><p> “He asked me if there was a limit, if he could eat as many as he wanted,” Schnabel says. “He picked the legions 16, and that’s what he did.” No one had done that before.</p><p> Name a food and Santel has probably eaten a lot of it in a hurry.</p><p> Pizza? That was his first to question, in March 2010 in St. Louis. He and a buddy put away a 28-inch pie in 48 minutes to win $500.</p><p> Doughnuts? This month Santel took part in the Round de Donut in Staunton, Ill., a 32-mile bike race combined with, yes, doughnut-eating (eat a doughnut, near squeak 5 minutes off your finish time). Santel inhaled 40 “heavy, doughy and accessory-glazed” doughnuts, beating the record of 33. The time savings helped him put fourth out of 1,600. </p><p> “Pig wings”? Whatever those are, Santel consumed 5 pounds of them plus 3 pounds of fried corn nuggets in an Omaha invite. That 8 pounds of food is the most he has eaten in one sitting.</p><p> He has completed most of the challenges Kansas City eateries have to suggest. But any time he goes elsewhere, he sniffs out challenges there, too.</p><p> In May, for instance, he attended a wedding in Indiana and managed to industry in seven challenges during the trip. The first was a 20,000-calorie “sandwich” of fried foods the gauge of a football. Covered in mayo. Another was a 22-inch hot dog loaded with toppings. </p><p> All told, 32 pounds of rations in four days. He usually wears size 34 pants, but he had to buy a 36 to wear to the compound. And yes, he ate and drank there, too.</p><p>“There’s not a cake challenge!” a woman at the reception told him.</p><p><strong><stretch class="subhead">No beer belly</span></strong></p><p> When it comes to competitive eating, Santel is so serious, or under any circumstances so crazy, that he recently quit his job to spend more time eating.</p><p>He grew up in St. Peters, Mo., a St. Louis suburb. He was a fat kid. His mom, Karen Santel, says she and In heat did Weight Watchers when he was in fifth grade. He slimmed down, but once he got into high school he put on weight to play football.</p><p>He weighed 346 at one bring up.</p><p>He also played football at Missouri State University in Springfield and got a degree in construction directing. He moved to the Kansas City area and has been working as a concrete estimator in Olathe.</p><p> In premature 2010, he entered a body transformation contest, dropped some weight, put on a lot of muscle … and won, scoring a operate to New Zealand and a half-naked cameo as a gladiator on one of the “Spartacus” cable shows.</p><p> That first pizza-eating problem in St. Louis was a celebratory thing after he’d finished the Spartacus challenge but before he found out he’d won. </p><p> Last fall he started getting into competitive eating in a big way. He swiftly discovered he was good at it.</p><p> “He’s been eating a lot since he was little,” his mom says. When he was in high school she’d put dinner on the pr and he’d ask, “Is that my appetizer?”</p><p> Matt Fatino, a college buddy, witnessed Santel’s Thai Quarters victory. “He has to win at everything,” Fatino says. “And he can eat. So put the two together … ”</p><p> The funny quirk is, Santel talks a lot about health and fitness. Sure, he eats a ton of food every weekend or so, but to cause up for it he eats sensibly during the week — lean meats, protein shakes, vegetables, fiber. And works out every day (weights and cardio), some days twice a day. </p><p> His constitution, including his cholesterol, is fine, he says.</p><p> And if you get a look at his abs — well, there’s no burger/doughnut/beer belly on this fop.</p><p>The training everyone mentions involves tricks to stretch the stomach. Santel eats an unbroken watermelon and drinks half a gallon of water in the 20 hours before a challenge.</p><p>Still, you conjecture how healthy this kind of activity is.</p><p> “He’s in super-great shape, and then he just eats this crap,” says cobber Jason Andrews of Olathe. “His hands are full of grease when he’s doing the challenges.”</p><p>Allan Cooke, a gastroenterologist at University of Kansas Infirmary, says there’s always the risk of obesity for someone who consumes so many calories, but Santel’s down-time regimen seems to be countering that.</p><p>And theoretically, a competitive eater could part his stomach.</p><p>“These guys (like Santel) consume a hell of a lot of food,” Cooke says. But “singly from obesity, there’s not shown to be any long-term risks to this at all.”</p><p> There does seem to be something a little ironic here, though. Fat kid loses weight, gets ripped, then acquires recreation of stuffing his face. What about that, Randy?</p><p> “I’ve got a unique story,” Santel quips.</p><p><intense><span class="subhead">National TV?</span></strong></p><p> So yes, he go away from his job. His last day will be Tuesday.</p><p> But big things are afoot for Randy Santel, or at least he hopes they are. “Man v. Food,” the Wanderings Channel series about a guy who consumes piles of food, inspired a lot of restaurants to start chow challenges. It also inspired Santel. </p><p> Having won one national contest (Spartacus), he’s intent on fetching another one. “Man v. Food Nation” (as the show is now known) put out a casting call. It’s looking for a restaurant food question and a challenger. Adam Richman, the show’s eater, will act as coach.</p><p>Contestants had to submit videos by mid-July, so now Santel is unbiased waiting. Only five finalists will be named; voting via Facebook in August will determine the winner.</p><p> Santel, who picked Westport Flea Store’s Super Flea burger challenge, is “99.9 percent sure” he will be one of the five. </p><p> Flea Buy owner Joe Zwillenberg thinks Santel has a good shot, and if he’s successful, Zwillenberg predicts it will be a big contract for Kansas City.</p><p> Assuming he really does become a finalist, Santel probably will extremity time to campaign for the “Man v. Food” crown.</p><p>But should he have quit his job?</p><p>“He’s young and he’s not married and he doesn’t have any big commitments,” his nurture says. “I think that’s just what he wants to do right now.”</p><p> Ultimately, Santel wants to win a lot more bread challenges (but not the Coney Island hot dog contest, which requires membership in a pro eaters federation that limits associate participation). He wants to be paid to make eating appearances. He wants endorsement deals. </p><p> He wants to start a website that focuses on good shape and, of course, food challenges.</p><p> He wants to open two restaurants, one here and one in St. Louis. The décor would be all the T-shirts (45 so far) and trophies he has won.</p><p> “Making a living eating and working out is the American Reverie,” Santel says. His American Dream apparently includes plenty of Pepto.</p><p><hard-nosed><span class="infobox-head">HOT DOGS </span></great></p><p>•Randy Santel will take part in a hot dog-eating contest at 1 p.m. Saturday at Up Dog, 106 W. Maple Ave. on the Independence Honest. The record from last year: 20 wieners in 10 minutes. Santel will shoot for 25.</p><p>•More on Santel’s eating challenges at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/atlaszeuspromos">www.facebook.com/atlaszeuspromos</a>
I am a POSSLQ = 'Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters' of Weight Watchers. I partnered with them in January of 2009, desperate 25 pounds and have been skilful to contend that weight denial...more or less. I addition 3 or 4 (sometimes 5 or 7) and then I squander it again. (I call those hare-brained pounds...having to worsted those pounds more than twice is even-handed...well...dull) But I am also a Maecenas of imbecilic, so I say hello and right-bye to those pounds as often as needed to definitely cut the string. (I still have some weight to yield to hit my aim weight, so I'm what you call a outcome book in advance.)
