Crazy Legs Conti (formerly known as John Conti or Jason Conti, prior to a legal name change) is an American competitive eater. 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, Massachusetts. He attended

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

. He was a three-sport athlete for the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays, playing basketball,

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

("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 screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

, bouncer, nude model, and window washer. Conti has appeared as a commentator for '' MLE Chowdown'' on

Spike TV Paramount Network is an American basic cable television channel and the flagship property of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global, who operates it through the MTV Entertainment Group. The network's headquarters are locate ...

. 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 that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

's '' Cash Cab'' program with Tim Janus who won $1600 total by answering the bonus question.

Competitive eating

Conti counts Eric Booker as an early inspiration to begin competitive eating. He won his first competition in

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

during Super Bowl weekend 2002 by eating over 400

oysters Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of Seawater, salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in Marine (ocean), marine or Brackish water, brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly Calcification, calcified, a ...

. 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. ''sesquipedali ...

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 is a retired Japanese competitive eating, competitive eater. Described as "the godfather of competitive eating", he is a six-time Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest champion and widely credited with popularizing the sport. Competition and records ...

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 kilometres ( 26 mi 385 yd), 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 ...

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 (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

'' 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 a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

, "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'' (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 series follows Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey American Mafia, Mafia boss who suffers from panic attacks. He reluct ...

, 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