Man dies after taco-eating contest in California

A man died shortly after competing in a taco-eating contest at a minor league baseball game in California, authorities said Wednesday.

Dana Hutchings, 41, of Fresno, died Tuesday night shortly after arriving at a hospital, said Tony Botti, a Fresno sheriff spokesman.

An autopsy on Hutchings will be done Thursday to determine a cause of death, Botti said. It was not immediately known how many tacos the man had eaten or whether he had won the contest.

Paul Braverman, a spokesman for the Fresno Grizzlies, said in a statement that the team was “devastated to learn” of the fan’s death and that the team would “work closely with local authorities and provide any helpful information that is requested”.

Tuesday night’s competition came before Saturday’s World Taco Eating Championship, to be held at Fresno’s annual Taco Truck Throwdown. The team on Wednesday announced that it was canceling that contest.

Matthew Boylan, who watched Tuesday’s taco eating contest from his seat in the stadium, told the Fresno Bee he quickly noticed Hutchings because “he was eating so fast compared to the other two [contestants]”.

“It was like he’d never eaten before,” Boylan said. “He was just shoving the tacos down his mouth without chewing.”

He said Hutchings collapsed and hit his face on a table about seven minutes into the contest, then fell to the ground.

The eating contest ended immediately.

During the 2018 Taco Eating Championship in Fresno, the professional eater Geoffrey Esper downed 73 tacos in eight minutes, KFSN-TV reported.

Competitive-eating contests have become major attractions at festivals and other events. Among the most popular is the annual Nathan’s Famous July Fourth hot dog eating contest on New York’s Coney Island, where Joey Chestnut, this year’s champion, ate 71. Esper finished third.