"Like many of the earliest competitive eaters, Mr. Janus stumbled into the sport. He was working as a day trader in Manhattan..."

"... hating the stress of his job. One day he went looking for a way to relieve the pressure and found it in a St. Patrick’s Day eating contest — corned beef and cabbage.... 'He brought this unique level of thoughtfulness and earnestness to competitive eating,' Jason Fagone, the author of 'Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream' (2006), said in an interview. 'He took this thing that a lot of people just throw off as a joke, and he took it seriously.'... After he took up competitive eating, he began working nights at a pizza parlor, and eventually quit day trading to make pies full time. He never earned enough money in the sport to live off it exclusively — at the time, no one did — but he also insisted that money didn’t interest him. 'It’s never been about the cash; it’s always about the adventure.... One of these contests recharges me more than a week at the beach ever would.'"

From "Tim Janus, One of the World’s Greatest Competitive Eaters, Has Died/He brought rigor and strategy to the sport, rising to No. 2 in the world and eating 141 pieces of nigiri in six minutes in the process" (NYT).

He died at age 49 — and not of overeating. Of lung cancer.

(If that makes you think about the Pope, here's a BBC article about the Pope's lung cancer. He seems to be doing well after the removal of the lower lobe of his right lung. There are photos of him celebrating mass at the hospital, after the surgery.)

I'm giving this post my "sports" tag, but is this a sport? I want to say that it is. Grok agreed with me, here.