Organizers estimated that more than 45,000 people attended the two-day festival, eating up almost 20 tons of chicken wings. Plans already are being made for next year's event, which organizers say will be bigger, better and most likely international.

Sunday's wing sauce competition was divided into two categories - traditional and creative. Finalists brought their ingredients and cooked their sauces on stage using hot plates. The only rule was that every sauce had to contain Franks Red Hot, the original Buffalo wing sauce and a major sponsor of the festival.

"There are no secret ingredients," said Jim Renaldo of East Aurora, who won the traditional division with a recipe of Franks Red Hot, butter and black pepper. He said the key was not drowning the wings in sauce.

"I hate soggy wings," he said.

Recipes for the creative competition ranged from a sort of wing-fondue, made of melted Old York cheese, to a no-cook sauce made with Italian salad dressing.

The creative sauce winner was Annette Rauh of the City of Tonawanda, whose recipe included, among other things, a splash of beer.

"It can be any kind of beer, but I prefer Labatt's Blue," she said. "It gives it an extra kicker, a little zing."

Paul Shea, a Hamburg Police lieutenant, took second in the traditional division. He also used beer, but not exactly as an ingredient.

"I follow the Rule of Three," he explained. "Three beers while you're making the wings, three while you're eating them and then three miles on the track the next day."

The winning recipes were selected by a panel of judges, included Stu Barnes of the Buffalo Sabres, an Elvis impersonator and Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde, who first proposed a Buffalo wing festival after seeing it in a Bill Murray movie.

Of course, the festival was filled with judges - thousands of festival-goers from Western New York and beyond - sampling wings from more than 30 different restaurants.

"They've got to be crisp," said Nancy Nocera of Getzville. "Not rubbery."

"And meaty," added a friend, Kathy Schiumo of East Amherst.

Kathy's husband, Lou, agreed, but said it's hard to mess up a Buffalo wing.

Sweetie Wiggens of Buffalo was less charitable. He said he had a sweet and sour wing, but wished he hadn't.

"Sweet and sour, that's a no-no on chicken wings."

Robin Kaplan and a friend were on their way home to New Jersey from Toronto, and stopped into Buffalo for some wings. But after sampling a few, they said they preferred "Atomic Wings" found in New York City.

As if that wasn't enough heresy for one afternoon, Kaplan added that she liked the boneless "chicken tenders," also popular downstate.

"You don't have to get your hands messy," she said.

Getting messy was hardly the concern of the 12 contestants of the American Buffalo Wing Championship, a professional eaters' contest officially sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Buffalo Bills players Drew Bledsoe, Ruben Brown and Alex Van Pelt served as honorary judges.

The eaters had 12 minutes to eat as many wings as they could. The winner was 35-year-old eating phenom Oleg Zhornitskiy, a Ukrainian native living in Brooklyn. He downed 75 wings, or more than 21/2 pounds, not including the bones. Zhornitskiy is the reigning matzo ball eating champ, but this was his first wing competition.

The event was a spectacle of gluttony, made longer by the seemingly endless chatter of emcee and IFOCE chairman, George Shea. Spectator Bob Bleecher, a teacher in Amherst, got a little queasy just from watching.

"I don't think I should've eaten first," he said.