Weather forecasts for July 4 predict a beautiful Independence Day. But I have it on
 good information that there'll be a sudden tsunami at noon.

As in Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi.

Fans of competitive eating's premier event -- the annual Nathan's hot dog-eating
 contest at Coney Island -- have been waiting a year for the return of the eating
 phenom, who became the world's most celebrated athlete by eating an astonishing 50
 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes on July 4, 2001, doubling the previous record.

People are always asking me how a 131-pound student from Nagano, Japan downed more
 than 13 pounds of hot dogs. Was he taking stomach enzyme supplements? Was he
 sneaking uneaten dogs onto another competitor's plate? Was his stomach surgically
 altered in secret Tokyo lab?

None of these spurious allegations -- some made by this reporter -- turned out to be
 true. America was forced to admit that Kobayashi is simply the greatest eater in
 the history of the world.

Can he be beaten? You'd think this would be the year, what with the sport of
 competitive eating mushrooming all over the nation. Where there was once just the
 Nathan's contest and some isolated regional events, there are now nearly two dozen
 contests sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the
 governing body of the world's fastest growing sport. This year also saw the debut
 of the World Series, Stanley Cup and Kentucky Derby of competitive eating all
 rolled into one: The Glutton Bowl, which aired on Fox back in February.

Kobayashi won it easily.

Of course, there'll be talk at Wednesday's weigh-in at City Hall that Kobayashi can
 be beaten. All the top names in competitive eating -- American champ Eric
 "Badlands" Booker, fan favorite "Hungry" Charles Hardy, German bratwurst champ
 Thomas Mainka and Russian pelmeni-eating god Oleg Zhornitskiy -- will say they've
 perfected a strategy to counter Kobayashi's eating style (known as "Solomoning,"
 because he breaks the dog in half before eating).

But it's all just talk.

"I've watched the tapes," said Booker, who ate 28 hot dogs and buns earlier this
 year. "The key is eating 21 in the first three minutes. Then you'll have to coast
 with 3 every minute after that."

Coast?! Booker's "coasting" is 36 hot dogs and buns alone -- an amount no man -- but
 Kobayashi -- has ever attained.

"The only man who can beat Kobayashi is Kobayashi," admitted George Shea, the IFOCE
 president who spent the year searching America for a hero to beat the Japanese at
 our own game. "But anything can happen in competitive eating: sour stomach,
 dyspepsia, a belch that just won't come up. Nothing is impossible if Kobayashi
 shows up with a case of gas."

Say what you will, but I still believe that the only way that America can beat
 Kobayashi on Thursday is if Nathan's allows wolves, bears and half-starved coyotes
 to compete for the United States. 

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gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net