Yes, I’m A Jock

What a great weekend for sports this weekend:

• First thing in the morning, there will be Stage 6 of the Paris-Nice Classic. Bradley Wiggins is making a wonderful start to a season in which he hopes — expects — to be on the Tour de France podium in July.
• Pretty soon after that finishes, Wales plays Italy in Rugby Union’s Six Nations tournament.  Wales has already won the Triple Crown and I fully anticipate them taking the Grand Slam this year.
• In the evening the Vancouver Canucks comes onto the ice to thrash the Montreal Canadiens.
• Saturday night closes with the first day of the Spring Basho — that’s sumo, you know.  If Baruto from Estonia wins the tournament we will likely have the first European yokozuna in the history of this very ancient sport.  I’ll be cheering for the Japanese rikishi Kisenasato.
• Finally, on Sunday morning, England plays France in the Six Nations.

Cycling, rugby, sumo and hockey — sometimes I just get lucky!

Sumo Is Back and Harumafuji Does It Again!

Regular readers will know  that my wife and I are devotees of sumo. This year has been a sorry one for fans of the sport as we had to deal with the remnants of last year’s betting scandal which was immediately followed by an even bigger match-fixing scandal.  The latter was so serious that it cost the jobs of a dozen or so rikishi (wrestlers) and managers who were thrown out of the sport.  The Sumo Association was forced to cancel the March basho tournament entirely while Japan TV refused to cover the next basho in May. There were times we seriously wondered if the ancient sport would actually survive.

But the July basho was held and televised, and will end tonight.  An interesting bunch of younger rikishi were promoted to the ranks of those now departed and it seems we might be back to normal.

One of our favourite rikishi is ozeki Harumafuji and I was pleased a couple of years ago to report here when he won his first yusho (championship). To be frank, he hasn’t been very good these past couple of years. He has been injury-prone and has barely done enough to keep his rank of ozeki. Since he won that yusho, the age’s greatest rikishi, Asashoryu was forced to retire for “lack of dignity” and the sport has been dominated by Hakuho who has won the last seven yusho in a row, equalling Asashoryu’s record. But last night Harumajui defeated Hakuho to win his second Emperor’s Cup.  It was a great and worthy fight and I cheered and cheered at the end.

More sumo here.

In other sports news, I have to report that my man Alberto Contador was just not up to snuff in the Tour de France this year.  But, luckily, the Schleck Brothers couldn’t win either and this year’s race will be won tomorrow by Cadel Evans, the first Australian to do so.  He thoroughly deserves the title.

Hakuho Is Stopped!

Last night (here in Vancouver, and Monday afternoon in Japan), the sumo world was stunned when Japanese ever-hopeful Kisenosato defeated Mongolian yokozuna Hakuho in the last bout of day two of the Kyusho basho.

Kisenosato’s victory was stunning because it stopped Hakuho after 63 consecutive wins, tied with the second-longest run in sumo history.  It was widely anticipated that Hakuho would reach 69 victories — equaling the all-time record — later this week.

The next question is whether Hakuho, the sole yokozuna or Grand Champion, can recover from this disappointment; or will he become vulnerable to others, such as the ozekis Baruto and Kotooshu, who would like to take this basho’s title.  We’ll see.

Following Sumo

As if  I don’t have enough to do already, I’m covering the Spring Sumo Tournament on mahalo. The tournament begins tonight at around midnight my time, and goes on for fifteen straight days.

With the enforced retirement of superstar Asashoryu, it will be a quick march to the coronation of Hakuho unless Harumafuji, Kotooshu and Baruto can pick up their game. I expect that they will and I’m looking forward to this being a fascinating basho.

Not All Sports Are Created Equal

I admit it, I am a TV jock.  I like to watch sports on TV.  I’ll watch almost any kind of sport instead of a blank screen.  You might think that one team sport is essentially much like any other team sport, but that isn’t so.  Watching such a variety of sports has allowed me to isolate a large number of differences between team sports in North America and team sports in the rest of the world.  And, so we are clear, I am talking here about major team sports — soccer, American/Canadian football, cricket, rugby, baseball, ice hockey, basketball.

1.  Sports as Business Risk

Virtually all team sports outside North America are played in a series of hierarchical leagues where a team’s position in the series of leagues is dependent solely on their success or failure in the previous season.  To use British soccer as the exemplar, there is the Premier League at the top of the heap.  Below that is the Championship League, followed by League Division 1, League Division 2 etc.  If you finish in the bottom three of the Premier League in one season, the following season you will be relegated to the Championship League.  Your position in the Premier League is taken by one of the teams that finished in the top three of the Championship League in the previous season and were therefore promoted.  Three or four bad years in a row and you can quickly find yourself several levels below the top flight. This system, or something very similar, is the case for soccer, rugby, cricket leagues all over the world.  Even the ancient Japanese sport of sumo operates in the same way.

To be clear in the basest North American manner, the level your team plays in determines everything to do with money.  A soccer team in the English Premier League will make tens of millions of dollars a year more than will a team in the Championship; and the diffference is similar between the Championship teams and those in lower leagues.  There are genuine financial incentives for doing well, and significant financial penalties for doing badly.

In North America, there are financial incentives in doing better than the next team, but there are NO penalties for bad play:  you can play really badly for decade after decade and still be in the major leagues.  There is no chance of a Triple-A team being promoted, and no chance of a major league team being demoted. The entire business risk based on sporting chance has disappeared.  Every part of the system — from TV-revenue sharing to bottom-up drafts — is designed to bring equality.  It is an oddly non-free enterprise system, socialist in its implications.

2.  Always a Winner

In all of the North American major league team sports there must always be a winner in every game.  If one team cannot win in the regulation time, then you keep playing in some form or another until someone DOES win:  extra time, shoot outs, etc.

In team sports outside of North America, a draw or tie is a perfectly acceptable result for all but a tiny proportion of matches.   In fact, where a weak team is playing a stronger, their tactics may well be to aim for a draw and thus secure something rather than lose everything in a winner-take-all scenario.  This is a legitimate management option.

3.  Armour

In the contact sports — American/Canadian football, hockey — the trend in North America is to increase and improve body armour. Steroids help too.

In the contact sports — rugby, soccer — the trend in the rest of the world is to minimize equipment to free up the athlete.  Looking at a moderrn professional rugby player in his kit is to imagine that he put on the team shirt and then stood in some vacuum packing device so that the uniform is almost moulded to the player’s body.  Muscles are what you see, not padding and straps and metal.

4.  The Viewing Experience

There are a number of cosmetic differences in watching these team sports.  For example, in the rest of world, in every kind of team sport (including baseball, football, basketball and hockey) the home team is listed first, the game clock shows how much of the game has gone, and the teams keep the same uniforms wherever they play (with a few minor exceptions).  In North America, the visiting team is always listed first, the game clock always shows how much time is left to play, and the home team is always in the darker uniforms.

None of these things are, perhaps of any importance by themselves.  However, together they change how a game is watched and experienced, especially on television.  Why these particular small things are reversed is a mystery to me.  Is it psychology? marketing? chance?

5.  The International Perspective

Finally, North American major league team sports are entirely insular at the club level.  They play all of their games and competitions against one another, no outsiders are wanted.  This leads to the embarrassing situation where, say, a team in Ohio plays a team in Georgia for a “World” series or a “World” championship.

In the rest of the world, major team sports find every excuse to play different leagues, to challenge clubs from all over the globe.  These international leagues and competitions sit on top of the national leagues and become a further incentive to good play.  T o use English soccer as the example once again, the top four teams in the Premier League get to play in the following year’s Champions League against similarly successful clubs from all over Europe.  The teams that come fifth to eighth in the English Premier League qualify for the Europa Cup.  It is estimated that winning the Champions League is worth $100 million to a club, while winning the Europe Cup might be 20% of that.  Similar high value competitions exist in rugby and cricket, and for soccer in other continents.

Major league sports teams outside North America do very well, thank you very much, both in terms of money and quality without any of the protected Trust-like setup that North American leagues feel the need to erect.  They operate in a completely free market, where talent rises to its own level against peers from every corner of the globe.  They are the true capitalists, while the Major League owners are more like a Stalin-era Politbureau stamping out competition.

The Old Farts Bite

Asashoryu, perhaps the greatest sumo wrestler of all time, has been forced to retire from the sport because he doesn’t have the “dignity” to retain his position of grand champion or yokozuna.  It has nothing to do with his skill in the ring but, rather, his apparent inability to live within the rules of conduct that others, less skillful than him, have set for the position.

During the last basho, Asashoryu got drunk one evening and punched out a colleague, breaking his nose and re-arranging his lip.  They settled the matter between themselves and that should have been that.  But no.  Asashoryu’s critics — perhaps especially Japanese elders who don’t like to see foreign dominance of the ancient sport — grabbed hold of the incident as a way to beat up on the champion and force his to retire.  This was, I am certain, the only way they could guarantee that the Mongolian, who had already won 25 Emperor’s Cups, would not break the record of 32 victories, currently held by a Japanese.

In the end, although he was tearful at his farewell, this may be a release for Asashoryu.  His extraordinary career has brought him broad business interests in Mongolia.  The restrictions attached to being a yokozuna are now gone and he can expand his business career as he wants.

Something similar is happening in English football.  John Terry, captain of Chelsea and England, has been discovered to be a serial cheater on his young wife, and with the wife of another player.  Apparently John has trouble keeping it in his pants.  So, he is not a good husband or friend, fine, but how does that affect his ability to be England’s captain?  There is a media-whipped frenzy demanding his resignation for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with his footballing abilities.  How many captains of industry or leading doctors and surgeons would be out of a job if we determined these things by morality?

As the Globe & Mail columnist noted this morning:  “It is unrealistic to have a squad of players where everyone respects and likes each other. While Terry will probably be disliked and mistrusted as a person within the squad he will, nevertheless, be respected as a football player. The harsh reality is this will trump all other options or considerations for [England's' manager]“.

Update: They DID remove John Terry as Captain this morning.  Such dummies!  The Worldsports site has a good piece on why that is a bad thing to do.

Sumo Glee!

Two things I really love — Glee and sumo — in one beautiful video!  Some days are just better than others.

Good stuff, Fox!

It is good to see that Akebono has shed several hundred pounds since his dohyo days.

The Power of Language (And Numbers)

Long-time readers of this space will know that my wife and I are devotees of sumo.  I have written about it here on numerous occasions.  In fact, this year will be our ninth anniversary of watching every sumo tournament (basho), fifteen days of action every two months.  And in all that time, we have been watching NHK’s coverage in Japanese, a language we do not speak or read.

In that time we have seen roughly 16,000 sumo bouts (20 bouts x 15 days x 6 times per year x 9 years) — and that’s a lot of wrestling.   It has also given us a lot of time to understand some basic words in an unknown language with an apparently incomprehensible script.  And over the years we have come to know quite a lot of specific Japanese terms, have come to understand names and throws, and we have even learned to recognize certain kanji characters and the sounds they represent.

This month, we finally got the English language feed to work (who knew I had to set up my TV as “default- Spanish”?) and it is an extraordinary step forward for us.  NHK have a variety of men and women who deliver their own commentary on the nightly contests (not just a straight translation of the regular NHK broadcast).  They give us the kind of gossip and chat that we didn’t even know existed in the sport.  We are pleased that many of the guesses we had made about things we didn’t understand proved accurate. And each night (nine so far this basho — one of the most exciting and closely fought we have ever seen) we learn more and more.  It is a truly stimulating experience.

The long period of self-study we put ourselves through really set us up to take advantage of the information we are now receiving.  After all these years, sumo is proving to be even more fascinating than we have previously imagined.

And The Small Shall Be Kings!

At 6′ 1″ and 280 lbs, the 25-year old Mongolian Davaanyam Byambadorj would be a big man in most places.  But in the world of sumo, those figures make him one of the smallest wrestlers at the highest level.  He used to fight under the name Ama but recently changed his ring name to Harumafuji when he was promoted to ozeki, the sport’s second-highest rank.  He has been one of our favourite rikishi for several years, and last night he beat off all-comers to win his first Emperor’s Cup!

At the beginning of the night, Harumafuji and yokozuna Hakuho led the pack with 13 wins and 1 loss.   In the evening’s penultimate scheduled bout, Harumafuji defeated ozeki Kotooshu to ensure himself at least a playoff.  In the last scheduled bout, the two yokozuna faced off, with Hakuho finally overcoming Asashoryu to set up the playoff.   After a brief rest, Harumafuji and Hakuho came together in a climatic battle.  It was a great bout culminating in Harumafuji throwing Hakuho into the dirt.

Harumajufi (then called Ama) debuted at the highest level in 2004.  He instantly became our favourite with his “small” size and seemingly happy attitude to the whole thing.  It is great to see him take the ultimate prize!

My Sporting Life: An Update

Sadly, the Vancouver Canucks were beaten in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  We played pretty well overall but we just couldn’t beat Chicago.  Oh well. That leaves more room for cycling, sumo and cricket!

The Giro d’Italia race just began this weekend.  This is Lance Armstrong’s first grand tour since his comeback.  I am no fan of his and I can think of a dozen riders I’d prefer to win.  A win by Mark Cavendish would be a turn up for the books — it has been a long long time since England had a serious GT challenger.

The May basho also began in Tokyo this weekend.   After 3 days, only five rikishi are still unbeaten, and these include my favourites Haramafuji, Takamisakari and Kisenosato.   The highly publicized Japanese up-and-comer Goeido, and current sumo god Hakuho round out the top five.   The cracks that have appeared lately in the great Asashoryu’s game seem to have opened up again last night.  He was soundly defeated by Aminishki.  Early days, early days.  We’ll see how it shakes out come this time next week.

As for cricket, we England fans are still basking in the thrashing we gave West Indies in the first Test.  Coming off a limp series in the Caribbean and in advance of the classic Ashes series against Australia later this summer, the victory was greatly appreciated.   The second Test starts on Thursday and we will be looking to repeat.

Sumo Breaks Out!

Regular readers will know that I am a fan, a devotee of the ancient sport of sumo.  I enjoy the rituals, the colour, the history.  But I also think it is pretty stuffy, and needs to get over itself in order to attract new and younger supporters and stars.

The great champion yokozuna Asashoryu from Mongolia has, over the years, been the face of modern sumo.  He fights hard against the tradition-bound rules that govern how rikishi should live, and he is always in trouble with the authorities.

However, it may be that the Sumo Association is softening its stance.   Rikishi are generally not allowed to be seen in public unless they are wearing wrestling gear or a kimono.  But they have given Asashoryu permission to appear in a series of ads for a new soda drink.   In them, the big guy plays a supposedly oversized 13-year old schoolboy.  In this one, he and his friends arrive home late from school.  The mother thinks he has taken the boys to a dance club, but Asa shows her they were actually practicing at the school’s sumo club.

It is definitely odd.  But then again I find a lot of Japanese ads are designed for a completely different sensibility than mine.   Fun though to see the yokozuna dance and act!

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

In March last year I wrote a piece about the Spring basho that was headlined: “The Champ Is Back“.  It chronicled yokozuna Asashoryu’s return from a dying career to oust the upstart yokozuna Hakuho and win his 22nd Emperor’s Cup.  Last night, at the end of the Winter basho, the same story unfolded.  Asashoryu had failed to finish the last three basho and all the talk was of retirement once again.  But he came back and beat all-comers.   In a winner-take-all playoff on the final night, Asashoryu dominated the younger champion, winning easily.  Just like last year, Asashoryu punched the air in triumph as Hakuho scowled off the doryo.

It was a wonderful moment (at least for those of us who support Asa against Hakuho) and it topped a fascinating tournament.  Everyone seemed so serious this time, matches were hard fought and losses taken badly.  All the ozeki’s had winning records (other than Kotomitskui who was injured), including our guy Haramafuji who overcame a dreadful 0-4 start.

The gentle Estonian giant sekiwake Baruto was a winner, as was komusubi Kisenasato.   But the two other senior rikishi were injured in bouts with Asashoryu.   When the big guy goes for something, he really goes for it.

An absorbing tournament.  Hopefully it is a sign of a good year to come in sumo.

Back In The Real World

That first week back at work last week certainly took its toll on me.  Four weeks without the day-to-day stresses takes the edge off; and it’s tough to catch back up to speed.  Long hours spent in snow and slush and heavy rain add to the shock.  Next week should be easier.  One victim has been the number of posts here.  But we have at least consoled ourselves with food.

My bride didn’t miss a beat all week, with wonderful dinners for me to come home to.  And a treasure they are.  I’ve enjoyed taking on the cooking this weekend: a weekend of comfort foods.    Last night I made James Barber’s Beef, Aniseed and Orange Stew.  The rich dark goodness that emerges after slow cooking, served over mashed potatoes with steamed broccoli, is a winter favourite of long standing.

Last night we stayed up into the wee hours to watch the first day of the January sumo basho from Tokyo. It was a mixed night for the rikishi we follow, and we were exhausted by the time we fell into bed.  This morning, I attempted to wake us up with a batch of spicy chilaquilles served with scrambled mushrooms and eggs, with toast and papaya juice.  Not bad stuff.

Also yesterday, I made up a batch of the no-knead bread.  I baked it this morning and the house smells grand. Later today, I will make another Barber recipe:  African-style pork and peanut butter stew, with rice and steamed vegetables.  I can hardly wait!

Thank God for good food!  Great leftovers, as always, will play a large part in making sure that next week is better than the last one.

Ama Disappears, Welcome ozeki Harumafuji

Following up to the update, Ama was indeed promoted to the rank of ozeki today.  At the same time, he changed his sumo name from Ama to Harumafuji.

Harumafuji said he would aim for the top rank of yokozuna (grand champion).  “Since I got this great name, I want to achieve results that would take the name higher,” the wrestler told reporters after his formal promotion.

Update:  And now he has won the Emperor’s Cup!

Sumo Update

Sumo fans will be aware by now that Hakuho won his 10th Emeperor’s Cup this weekend, beating Ama after a long-drawn-out winner-take-all contest.  Both wrestlers finished the basho with 13-2 records, and thus Ama is pretty much guaranteed to be promoted to the rank of ozeki later this week.

Ama’s performance — beating all the ozeki, and the yokozuna in their first match, and his fearless battle in the play-off bout — was generally welcomed by the crowd.  It is true that he is not Japanese (being yet another Mongolian), but his ability to overcome by sheer technique his weight and size limitations in a sport where size and weight often carry the day is recognized as remarkable.  And he always smiles at the end of a bout, win or lose.

It is a pleasant feeling when the good guy does well.

Quivering With Anticipation

Tonight is the last session of the Winter basho in Kyushu.   With the withdrawal of injured yokozuna Asashoryu and the recent dominance of yokozuna Hakuho, many sumo fans had low expectations from this tournament.  But we were wrong.

There had always been one point of interest:  One of the rules of thumb in sumo is that for a senior rikishi to win 33 bouts over three consecutive bashos entitles him to serious consideration for promotion to ozeki, the rank immediately below yokozuna.  Our favourite, Ama, the smallest of all the senior rikishi, needed 11 wins this time to qualify, and his fan clubs have been out in force most days to cheer him on.  To rising public acclaim, Ama has exceeded all our expectations with wonderful technique to overcome his weight and size disadvantage.

With just tonight to go, Ama already sits at 12-2, level with Hakuho at the top of the tournament.  And Ama beat Hakuho two nights ago to get himself into a chance to win the tournament outright.   Hakuho fights ozeki Kotomitsukui tonight, while Ama faces lower-ranked Baruto.  If Ama wins and Hakuho loses, then Ama wins the Emperor’s Cup (and vice versa, of course).   If they both win, then there is a special winner-take-all bout between the two at the end of the evening.

Beyond the Ama sensation, I have to say that the level of sumo seems really high this tournament.  The lower ranked rikishi have been putting on quite the show; and mostly to a half-empty arena.  Last night the house was full — as I am sure it will be tonight — but some of the mid-week audiences have been less than stellar.  Oh well;  they’ve missed a treat.

I’ve already had my nap to ensure I stay awake until the finish at about 1 tomorrow morning!

My Sporting Life

This is a great time of year for an armchair jock like me.  Football (soccer) and hockey seasons have been going for a few weeks now, there have been some important cricket matches in sunnier climes, and the Fall basho began just yesterday in Koyushu.

The great sumo champion Asashoryu seems to be confirming negative views of his fading career by withdrawing from this basho because of an injury.  That news seemed to leave fellow yokozuna Hakuho with an easy path to his 9th Emperor’s Cup.  The main interest for this tournament was to see if our favourite, Ama, the smallest rikishi in the sport’s senior ranks, could gain 11 wins out of the 15 bouts and thus win promotion to ozeki.  But then came last night’s opening.   Ama won a challenging first fight against Kotoshogiku.  But Hakuho found himself floored by the popular though erratic Aminishiki.  Hometown favourite ozeki Kaio lost too, as did ozeki Kotooshu (confirming, perhaps, the belief that his Cup victory in May was a lucky blip).  Even after just one day, this basho already seems excitingly unpredictable and open for a surprise victor.

In the NHL, our beloved Canucks started the season with a series of victories. They then slumped, but now, after last night’s game, and due in no small part to three straight shutouts by goaltender Roberto Luongo, they lead the Northwest Division.   They are an exciting, attacking team with 48 goals already, and from a wide range of players.  Whatever changes GM Mike Gillis wanted in the team, coach Alain Vigneault seems to be delivering.  If only he could have been half this positive last year!

Over in England, Chelsea still march forward, leading the Premier League with an incredible +25 goal difference.  With Manchester United losing yet again today, only Liverpool stand in the way of total domination!  [Reader Alert: cliche-ridden sentence to follow:] But there’s a long way to go in the season yet,  we have to take it one game at a time, believe in ourselves and give 110%.

My Sporting Life

The Fall basho passed quietly.  After the marijuana scandals of the summer, and the lifetime suspension of three Russian rikishi, I think everyone connected to sumo breathed a sigh of relief as the tournament itself went off well.  Yokozuna Hakuho has settled in as the reigning champion, easily winning his 8th Emperor’s Cup with a 14-1 record.  Our man Ama, smallest rikishi at the highest level, was second at 13-2, winning the Outstanding Performance Award and adding to his claim for promotion to ozeki.

The great champion Asashoryu seems to be winding down his career.  He lost 4 of his first 7 fights and retired from the tournament with “injuries”, the second time in a row he has pulled that stunt.  There will be pressure on him for sure to either pull up his socks or to retire.  Asashoryu has 22 Emperor’s Cups and was hoping in a few years to have taken the record from Taiho’s 32 wins.  However, Hakuho, Ama and a few up-and-comers will probably put paid to that idea.  Of course, if he comes back for a win in November, then all bets are off.

Hooray, the European football season is back!  It is a treat to watch good football each and every Saturday morning.  I am especially pleased that Chelsea are already top of the English Premier Division, a position I hope they hold until the end.

Also starting is the North American ice hockey season.  We are still in exhibition play for another couple of weeks, but the Canucks have begun what was supposed to be a “transitional” season for the team with a surprising 4-0 record.   Vigneault has been putting out some fascinating line combinations with our young prospects and a few of the talent acquired over the summer.   Today is the big pre-season cut day; a dozen or more players have to be cut from the roster.  It will be very interesting to see what the coach does with fewer options.

And finally, there is cycling.  Alberto Contador joined the list of only four other cyclists who have won all three Grand Tours: the Tour de France in 2007, the Giro d’Italia this May, and the Vuelta a Espagna this month.  It has been hard to follow the post Tour season.  My heavy load at work and no TV coverage has made it very difficult.  I love to watch cycling, and following it on text just doesn’t cut it.  Hopefully the 2009 season will be better covered by OLN and others.

Mixed Emotions As Both Tour and Basho End

The Tour de France ended about fifteen minutes ago.  And the summer basho in Nagoya finished just a fdew hours ago.  The men I had championed, Valverde and Kotooshu respectively, didn’t win.  In fact, both disappointed if truth be told.  But both events themselves lived up to pre-tournament hype.

The Tour, in particular, was more exciting than for many years past.  There were seven changes of the yellow jersey over the three weeks and the winner was in serious doubt right up until Carlos Sastre survived the Individual Time Trial yesterday.  Today was the typical parade into Paris, so Sastre takes the final yellow jersey and the overall win by about a minute.   One of the revelations for me has been Bernhard Kohl, who took the King of the Mountains title by a distance, and almost surprised everyone by his speed in the Time Trial.

Alejandro Valverde finished 9th, about 7 minutes down.   He was well-hyped for a podium finish and I thought he had a real shot at the final yellow.  He won the opeing stage with a terrific acceleration in the final sprint and I thought we were well set.  But he never seemed aggressive enough, never made the running, and when he lost time in the Pyrennees his chance was gone.   He did well in the Alps but, once again, his lack of aggression cost him dear in my opinion.  I wonder if he will be racing the Huelta?

In Nagoya, Hakuho powered his way to a 15-0 record in winning his seventh Emperor’s Cup.  In the final contest last night, he comprehensively defeated my man Kotooshu, bringing the ozeki to a lackluster 9-6 record.  Kotooshu won the basho in May and would have expected promotion to yokozuna, sumo’s highest rank, had he won back-to-back victories.  Now, he has to discipline himself for a much longer wait.

Ama continued his streak. His 10-5 was his sixth winning record in a row and he continues to generate crowd support and decent kensho bundles.  He was awarded the basho‘s Technique Prize for the fourth time in his career.

I didn’t get to see as much of this basho as I would have liked.  However, it is clear that there are a number of excellent young rikishi — eastern Europeans among them — who are beginning to break into the rankings.  I suspect we will see a number of the veterans forced out of the Makuuchi ranks over the next year or so.  These newbies are aggressive and want to grab the top spots as quickly as possible.  It makes for exciting watching!

My Sporting Life

Another full week of all work and no play.  I finally shut it all off at about 2 today.  I had a nap, cooked a wicked dinner, and even managed to do some painting.

I can’t blame all my tiredness on the long hours connected to the office, because there are a few complications unconnected to work; first and foremost being the Tour.

While it is certainly true that I prefer cricket, football and hockey to cycling, it is equally true that my favourite sporting event of the year — the only one I actively look forward to — is the Tour de France.  This year it started about two weeks ago, at exactly the same time that work became hectic.  It runs in my time zone from about 3am to 8am.   I usually manage to watch from about 5 until I have to leave at 7:30, following the finish on my Blackberry as the bus chugs along.  I’ve been known to leave late some days.  On the weekends, of course, all sense is discarded in the realization that I can watch from beginning to end, so long as I sacrifice a few hours sleep.

It’s been a wonderful Tour, by the way, a few drug busts notwithstanding.   Today’s mountain stage was some of the most extraordinary sporting drama created by extraordinary athletes I have ever seen.  I am taking a mental health day on Wednesday so as to be able to watch in relaxation the ride to L’Alpe d’Huez.  The day includes both the fearsome Col du Galbier and the mountain top finish at L’Alpe d’Huez.   It will be an historic and fascinating day.

We are also in the middle of the Summer Sumo basho in Nagoya.   Here, that is shown from midnight to 2am.  With the Tour going on, I just can’t manage to stay up that late.  But we tape it and I watch it the next day.

Ama

This basho, the first after Kotooshu won in May, has produced some interesting stuff, too.   The great yokozuna Asashoryu lost an early bout and was then the victim of dubious referring in another bout.  He quit the tournament with a damaged elbow.  He seems to have lost his edge, his determination, and he looks to be on the downward slope of his career.   The other yokozuna, Hakuho, is cruising to another championship with an 8-0 frecord so far.   Our favourite, Ama, is second at 7-1.

Again, these last few days have given us a great Open golf championship.  The nostalgia of Greg Norman (and his melodramatic semi-collapse on the final day), the excitement of the 20-year old amateur coming in 5th, and the nice guy Irishman winning for the second year in a row.  Good stuff.  But it began in the middle of the night, too.  Thank God it is over.

Now, I just have to survive another week of sumo and cycling — and another couple of days of England;s cricketers getting thrashed by South Africa — and I’ll be fine.   Until the Olympics of course.