SHOULD competitive eating be an Olympic sport? Thus far the International Olympic Committee has been unable to stomach the idea. “We have reached out to Jacques Rogge (the IOC president),” George Shea, who is the president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, said, “but he has shunned us.” Or, in other words: Rogge says get stuffed. For the foreseeable future, then, it looks as if the only people eating beyond reason at the Olympics will be the guests in the corporate areas.

Shea cannot see what the problem is. As he explained during The Big Eat, a Channel 4 documentary that went to the very heart of the sport of competitive eating — via, inevitably, the stomach — eating competitively “brings us back to our very essence”.

In this sense, in Shea’s view, it relates straightforwardly to other innate athleticisms that have been central to the Olympics since their earliest days, such as running and jumping.

Fair point. Then again, did they have hot dogs in Ancient Greece? And if they did, could anyone manage 53½ of them in 12 minutes? That’s the record held by Takeru Kobayashi, of Japan, the world champion of competitive eating.

Do not try this at home. Competitive eating was a big deal on Japanese television until a copycat student died speedeating rice. Now it’s virtually a pariah sport there, destined to languish in ignominy, the way that cricket was here before this summer’s Ashes series.

As a result, Kobayashi does most of his eating in America, which is fitting enough, given that America is the place where people do most of the eating, and where 53½ hot dogs is merely a generous helping.

Somehow you expect a competitive hot dog eater to be a large man — a sumo wrestler without the discipline. And it’s true, some of the American eaters do weigh in on the heavy side. You wouldn’t be too keen, for instance, to find Ed “Cookie” Jarvis occupying the seat next to you in economy. Cookie once downed 4½lbs of French fries in four minutes and, when you look at him, you can see where they went.

But the master Kobayashi’s gym-built, muscular frame comes as something of a surprise, and would surely impress even the most sceptical IOC member. In particular, the perfect six-pack of Kobayashi’s stomach is a shock. One imagined something more along the lines of a Party Seven.

Mind you, that midriff does not look quite so decorous in the immediate aftermath of competition, with a small mountain of compressed meat and bread wedged inside it. “There’s the stomach,” Shea said. “Like an anaconda that’s swallowed a pig.” Shea — who is to competitive eating what Sid Waddell is to darts, ie, an evangelist equipped with a silver tongue — ranks Kobayashi “the greatest athlete living”.

Kobayashi’s gifts, apparently, are hand speed, jaw strength and stomach capacity. You could argue that stomach capacity is the most vital. All the hand speed in the world will amount to nothing if you don’t have the stomach for the contest. Ask any competitor. Definitely ask Mike Gatting.

But is competitive eating an area in which a British athlete could excel? That was Shea’s question when he came to Britain seeking a homegrown champion to take to America to compete with the world’s best eaters in the annual July 4 Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest — the World Cup of competitive eating.

It boiled down to a pork pie eat-off in Nottingham between four hopefuls — welcomed on to the stage by Shea as “the four horsemen of the oesophagus”. (Again, Waddell, one felt, would have been impressed.) The finalists included Jim “Oyster” Glackin, one-time holder of the world record for Guinness and oyster consumption — a pint and a dozen oysters in 13 seconds. “I miss the spotlight,” Glackin said. But pork pies just weren’t his medium, and it was Rob “Baby Face” Burns, of Wolverhampton, who came through on the day, putting away 18 pies in the statutory 12-minute period.

Burns had no records to his name, but he did have some promising form, having once consumed the whole of the Burger King menu in one sitting for a bet. That’s top-quality eating, but a world away from the pressures of a New York hot dog blowout in front of a screaming crowd and the cameras of ESPN, the sports channel. Burns crumpled under the pressure, finishing last on ten hot dogs. Kobayashi won with 49 — down on his personal best, but several meals ahead of the rest of the field.

Still, Burns, the novice, had apparently got a taste for it. Will he be back? My gut feeling says yes.