nagora

It's particularly odd since the official sumo phone app is blocked in the UK. But, I'm in. Assuming it happens.

On day 12 Abi (ranked #37) hadn't fought anyone higher than #19. The next day he was facing #3. That feels a bit less than "progressively" to me. I suppose that's a bit of hindsight and I guess he did actually lose the day 7 bout. Well, tomorrow will be interesting - Sunday, probably not so much. Unless Abi wins tomorrow, that is. Then Sunday might produce some fireworks.

That's what I was getting at: they should either slide the pressure up in stages or play the ranking chips where they fell. This "oh crap, he's doing well, throw him at the top guys quickly" seems very half-arsed. I'd personally prefer them to increase the pressure more gradually than the way they've done it here. It's inelegant.

I think they should have had the courage of their convictions - if an M15 gets to day-15 with the joint top score then have a play off. Artificially jumping him from facing people around his rank straight to an Ozeki and then immediately to the Yokozuna looks something like panic. Now they effectively have the final set up for day-14.

Whoever wins will face Terunofuji on day 14, and Shodai will face him on 15 as expected. Either Abi or Takakeisho will not face Terunofuji unless the latter loses and we end up with a play-off, I think.

Simple enough question: can two wrestlers from the same heya meet on the last day or only in playoffs? Has there ever been a period with two active Yokozuna from the same heya?

I had forgotten about Chiyonofuji and Hokutoumi being from the same stable. I enjoyed watching both of them back in the day. Hokutoumi had an excellent fighting spirit as I recall.

I thought there were lots of Bob Cats in America.

If you're in the running, you shouldn't be falling for tricks like that. A guy on 6-7 isn't there to do you any favours. It's hardly Onosho's first rodeo, is it?

All the more reason to put it in the opening ceremony, which is a statement of what is special about the host country.

I guess it's just relief, then. Although I still think the interviewer might have had a few.

Had any alcohol been consumed before these interviews, perchance?

But he was somewhere, watching...

And the pendulum will swing, as it always has.

It's one of those things. I understand why women would want to do sumo or anything else they have an interest in. I don't understand why I would want to watch it. I feel the same about weight/sex-segregated sports generally. Worst of all is tennis where women are paid the same for less effort and, by and large, a lot less quality too.

Do you mean James May? From Top Gear/Grand Tour?

That'll give them something to talk about when you go into the scanner booth at security. I suppose you could slap it to show that you don't have any weapons.

Wow. That shadow-people thing is really tasteless in a Japanese setting. Although I have recently watched a documentary about Nagasaki, so maybe I'm just feeling a bit sensitive to to the imagery.

I personally felt that there was a Nuremberg feel to some of the Beijing opening which I found unpleasant. Also, of course, they faked some of it on the broadcast with CGI which is a bit crap.

Giving up fags is a no-brainer, surely? From what I've seen of ex-smokers, the improvement in lung capacity is very rapid and you need oxygen to burn fuel for energy, which you need for effective exercise and any bout longer than 30 seconds. Booze is harder to quantify, but it is a poison which your system has to neutralize or you die from quite small doses (of alcohol), so maybe that's not too surprising either. In terms of weight, it's interesting that the normal sumo build is very similar to Olympic weight-lifters, at least to my casual eye. The guys that lift the big weights don't look anything like bodybuilders or gymnasts.

The thing about tennis and golf grandslams is that the different venues have a very significant effect. That's not the same for Sumo and I'm not sure the concept travels very well because of it. Consecutive wins is the big number for Sumo, IMO.

To be fair to Naga, she was just reading a story from one of the newspapers that had caught her eye. She wasn't presenting the Sports News or pretending to be a sports reporter, just doing a review of odd stories in the morning's chip wrappers.

Hmmm. Not sure. I was going by what an owner of a game shop told me; I wasn't a player myself.

The thing about those is that the IOC is the most litigious body in the world. They insist on the copyright laws being re-written to give them draconian powers such as suing a game company for using this symbol in their card game Legend of the Five Rings: because, obviously(!), it's five interlocking rings. Since this was part of the design on the card backs, the company had to pulp their stock and re-issue the cards with a different back, which in turn meant that anyone playing the game had to either not buy any new expansions or junk their old cards and buy everything over again to avoid having different backs on different cards. The IOC regarded this as a positive outcome. Because they are bastards. So, it's hard to believe that those yukatas went unnoticed by the Japanese arm of the IOC and that Hakuho didn't have some reason to think they were appropriate/allowed. I guess that somewhere along the way the IOC and the NSK failed to come to some sort of kickback arrangement and the sport has simply been sidelined as a result. In any case, a Tokyo Olympics without Sumo but with Skateboarding is pretty bloody lame (I say this as a former and still occasional skateboarder).

I'd put it better. Considerably so.