Crazy Legs Conti (formerly known as John Conti or Jason Conti, prior to a legal name change) is an American

competitive eater Competitive eating, or speed eating, is an activity in which participants compete against each other to eat large quantities of food, usually in a short time period. Contests are typically eight to ten minutes long, although some competitions c ...

. In 2011, he was ranked 21st in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

Early life and education

Conti was raised in

Belmont Belmont may refer to: People * Belmont (surname) Places * Belmont Abbey (disambiguation) * Belmont Historic District (disambiguation) * Belmont Hotel (disambiguation) * Belmont Park (disambiguation) * Belmont Plantation (disambiguation) * Belmon ...

, Massachusetts. He attended

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

. He was a three-sport athlete for the

Johns Hopkins Blue Jays The Johns Hopkins Blue Jays are the 24 intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, Maryland. They compete in the NCAA Division III, except for their lacrosse teams, which compete in Division I. ...

, playing basketball,

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

("third string punter"), and on the track team he competed in

high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...

("but I never quite got high enough to qualify").

Other careers

In addition to competitive eating, he has had a variety of jobs including purchasing agent for a steakhouse restaurant,

screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...

bouncer A bouncer (also known as a doorman or door supervisor) is a type of security guard, employed at venues such as bars, nightclubs, cabaret clubs, stripclubs, casinos, hotels, billiard halls, restaurants, sporting events, schools, concerts, or m ...

, nude model, and

window washer A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mater ...

. Conti has appeared as a commentator for '' MLE Chowdown'' on

Spike TV Paramount Network is an American basic cable television channel owned by the MTV Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Media Networks. The network's headquarters are located at the Paramount Pictures studio lot in Los Angeles. The channel was o ...

. He appeared once on the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

's '' Cash Cab'' program with

Tim Janus Tim Janus (born December 31, 1976) is an American entertainer, media personality and retired competitive eater known in the competitive eating community as "Eater X". He was a member of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE). ...

who won $1600 total by answering the bonus question.

Competitive eating

Conti counts

Eric Booker Eric James Booker (born June 21, 1969), known professionally as Badlands Booker or BadlandsChugs, is an American competitive eater, rapper and YouTube personality. He holds seven Major League Eating recognized world records, three Guinness Wor ...

as an early inspiration to begin competitive eating. He won his first competition in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

during Super Bowl weekend 2002 by eating over 400

oysters Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not al ...

. He has held several world records, including the

green bean Green beans are young, unripe fruits of various cultivars of the common bean ('' Phaseolus vulgaris''), although immature or young pods of the runner bean (''Phaseolus coccineus''), yardlong bean ( ''Vigna unguiculata'' subsp. ''sesquipedalis ...

and buffet food categories. Conti trains by eating six hot dogs at a time as fast as possible and has studied video of

Takeru Kobayashi , also known as Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi, is a Japanese competitive eater. Described as "the godfather of competitive eating", Kobayashi is a six-time champion of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest and is widely credited with popularizing the spor ...

in order to improve his technique. He also runs and goes to the gym three times a week to avoid gaining excess weight. This led him to compete in several

marathon The marathon is a long-distance foot race with a distance of , usually run as a road race, but the distance can be covered on trail routes. The marathon can be completed by running or with a run/walk strategy. There are also wheelchair div ...

s. He claims that his motivation in competing is the joy of winning, rather than prize money. In addition to his successes, he is known to be magnanimous in defeat. He is the subject of the 2004 competitive eating

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

'' Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating''.

Other endeavors

Conti and his fellow Johns Hopkins alumnus Chris Russell produced a

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

, "Dearly Beloved", which won the Gold Award for Best Short Film Comedy-Adaptation at the Houston International Film Festival in 1997. Conti has been involved in several other productions as assorted crew members; films include ''Mambo Café'' (2000) and ''

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway ''The Bumblebee Flies Anyway'' is a 1999 drama film starring Elijah Wood and directed by Martin Duffy. It is based on the novel of the same name by Robert Cormier. The film premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival in September 1999 and ...

'' (1999). Conti appeared as an uncredited cameo in

The Sopranos ''The Sopranos'' is an American Crime film#Crime drama, crime drama television series created by David Chase. The story revolves around Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey-based American Mafia, Italian-American mobster, portraying h ...

, in the episode " The Ride". Conti's short film 'SOULFINGER vs GOLDFINGER screened a
The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival
in 2017.

References

External links