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Tears flowed, noses ran and faces were wincing in pain as things heated up at the Canberra chilli eating competition on Saturday. Twenty brave participants signed up for the stunt held in Civic at the 2016 World Curry Festival and in the end there were just two men left standing. With a tempting pint of milk in front of them each agreed to forsake any drinks, including water, as they chowed down on chillies that in each round climbed the Scoville scale – a measurement of the pungency or spicy heat of each chili pepper. Round one began with a jalapeño, with a rating of 10,000-25,000, then came serano peppers, Thai red chillies, habañeros, ghost chillies and Thai green chillies. Yosuke Hongaku was the first contestant to fold, unable to finish his chilli in the time he dropped out in round two. Holding his mouth open to cool it between sentences the Japanese national said chilli eating was not his forte but he'd enjoyed the atmosphere. Lachlan Hart, 19, struggled through five rounds before he succumbed to drinking his pint of icy cold milk. "My face is vibrating, my heart is quick and everything is hell," he said. "I thought I had what it takes but I don't have the goods." At round six the Trinidad Scorpion Butch Pepper, named the world's hottest chilli until 2013 and with a Scoville rating of 1.4 million, hit the table. When Beau Brandon told organisers he was lactose intolerant they fetched him a cold ginger beer as his refresher, but the 29-year-old was determined to make it to the final round and eat the current world's hottest chilli – The Carolina Reaper. He was one of five men who managed to get the searing hot chilli down in the last round, but said it took a huge toll. "I can't tell you how my mouth feels," he said. "My hands are tingling, it feels like there are ants crawling on my skin." The madness continued with those left in the running doubling down on the Carolina Reapers until Morgan Callaghan and Lucas Danes decided to call it a draw. "These two are [the] hottest men in Canberra, at least internally," the competition announcer said. Gulping down a container of two-litre milk, Mr Danes said sharing the win was a "sign of great sportsmanship".

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