http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entert ... 680416.htm


Slender lass sets a supersize record
She gulped down a 6-pound burger in 3 hours.



Armed with only a positive attitude, a lanky blond co-ed from the College of New Jersey has succeeded where bigger men have failed.

Much bigger.

Indeed, Kate Stelnick, a 5-foot, 7-inch 19-year-old who hails from Princeton, weighs barely 115 pounds versus her chief competitor, who rolls in at 420.

Yet she is apparently the only American - indeed, the only person on Earth - to eat a six-pound hamburger with five pounds of fixings in under three hours.

Truly well done.

"We don't serve rare burgers," said Denny Leigey Jr., who owns Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pa., where the chow-down took place on Jan. 12.

Now Stelnick is reaping fame on Web sites from Germany to Japan. She's gotten proposals of marriage, and photos of her big day are online at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gsnoek. And tomorrow she will travel by chauffeured limousine from her campus in Ewing, N.J., to New York to appear on Good Morning America. "Oh, man - it's crazy," said Stelnick, who was not permitted to use a knife and fork. "I can't believe I'm getting all this attention."

And why not?

"She's clearly got an enormous innate talent," says public relations specialist George Shay. No one in the entire history of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, which Shay represents, has ever done what Stelnick did. And she's not even a member. She did it on a whim.

Lo, for seven long years, Leigey and his son, Denny the third, held out their challenge:

Finish Ye Old 96er - their 96-ounce cheeseburger topped with five pounds of pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayo and ketchup - in under three hours, and win!

The prize is a $75 Denny's gift certificate and a T-shirt (which wasn't available in Stelnick's size and had to be special-ordered).

Stelnick heard about the challenge on the Food Network. She and two friends drove for five hours and reached Denny's, near State College, around noon. "I didn't eat for 14 hours before we went," said Stelnick, an early childhood education major.

Over the years, 155 folks have finished Denny's two-pounder, which costs $9.85 and comes with a one-hour time limit. Sixty-two have downed the three-pounder, which is $11.65 and must be eaten in 90 minutes. But no one's managed to swallow the $23.95 six-pounder in under three hours.

Stelnick did it in two hours, 54 minutes.

"I felt really full right away," she said in a telephone interview yesterday. "But then it went away and I was fine."

Stelnick's success couldn't come at a more opportune time. This Saturday is the World Hamburger-Eating Championship - in Las Vegas, of course.

At that event, which carries a $10,000 purse, she could challenge Japan's Takeru Kobayashi, who won last year by downing 69 burgers in eight minutes. Those were mere 21/2-inch burgers.

By comparison, Stelnick faced a massive piece of meat.

"The bun itself is three loaves of bread," Leigey says. The meat, quality sirloin bound with breadcrumbs and eggs, is grilled for 45 minutes. Toppings are mandatory: two whole tomatoes, a pound and a half of American cheese, six dill pickles, a half head of lettuce, one large onion plus peppers, relish, mayo, ketchup and mustard.

Badlands Booker is wondering if Stelnick will come to Philadelphia on Feb. 4 for the Wing Bowl. Booker, who holds titles in doughnut, corned beef hash, burrito, hard-boiled egg, hot dog and matzo ball eating, tried Denny's 96er three times and failed. All the more amazing, then, that Stelnick was able to consume almost 6 percent of her body weight in burger, in record time.

"My friends have always made fun of me because I eat so much," she said. "They say I must have a fat kid living inside of me."

Her parents must be proud.

"They weren't very happy," Stelnick says. "They told me not to go in the first place and now they're getting all these calls."

So Stelnick's taking herself out of the competition. She won't eat that much in public ever again.

"It was a one-time thing."

Some more pictures...