Bainbridge fair closes with hot dog eating contest
Published 10:30 am Wednesday, October 12, 2022
- Contestants covered their hot dogs in mustard and dunked them in pitchers of water to help go down easier.
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Saturday saw the Bainbridge Fair conclude, with a petting zoo hosted by the local 4H, a hot dog eating contest, and helicopter rides, in addition to the usual rides and food.
Chamber of Commerce president Lauren Minor spoke with the Post-Searchlight about the event’s turnout afterwards. “It’s hard to say exactly, but we know we had over 8,000 people attend,” she said. “We had a lot of kids 3 and under that get in for free, so we can’t base it on our income.”
The Chamber currently has no hard numbers for the amount of funds raised, though Minor gave her thoughts. “It was very successful, and looks like it will outperform our last fair, which was in 2019.” She elaborated, “I think people were so anxious to get out and go to the fair, because we haven’t had it in two years, that we just saw a huge turnout. And you think about, my son’s three years old, and he hasn’t been able to go to a fair since he was born, so I think there were a lot of families with young kids who, their kids could experience it for the first time.”
The community feedback has been relatively positive, especially for Wednesday night’s church youth rally. “It was great, we had a huge turnout for the churches, a lot of people from their congregations came to listen to their youth band play.”
As for the hotdog eating contest on Saturday, BHS football player Samuel “Big Country” Blyth won, taking home a trophy and a $500 check. “The hotdog eating contest was high-energy,” Minor said. “I was surprised at how intense it was, but it was a lot of fun, because everybody cheered for their person… it really added an element to the fair that felt very fair-like, if you will.”
“I would like to thank the community for coming to the fair,” she concluded. “The fair makes up about 20% of our budget, so it’s very important to us to be able to do what we do, and the whole goal of the Chamber is to foster growth in Bainbridge and Decatur County… The fair definitely helps us to be able to do that, so I really appreciate the community support.”
