Lifestyle
Sumo for all
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Keeping a stable weight is also important, especially for professional sumo wrestlers. One of the Hong Kong women sumo representatives, Mak Ka-po, said wrestlers were not necessarily to be fat. She weighs 53 kilograms. Though she does not have a special way to keep her daily diet, she avoids taking oily food.
As for amateurs who want to try sumo, they are welcome regardless of weight, Mak said.
Women were prohibited to take part in sumo in traditional Japanese society. In the past, women were not even allowed to watch sumo games because it was considered as desecration.
At present, there is shin-sumo, sumo for women. But the image of sumo fails to attract many women players because the mawashi will not cover the whole body of the women.
The Hong Kong Sumo Association began to have women members in 1999. Now not all traditional sumo rules are followed, so girls do not need to gain more weight to do the sport.
There is no hesitation for women fans to join. ˇ§Once you have taken part in sumo, you will be addicted to this sport,ˇ¨ said Mak, the woman wrestler.
She finds sumo challenging as she has to stay cool and be agile at the same time. ˇ§If one is nervous, then one will lose the game,ˇ¨ she said, adding that concentration is important during competition.
Another woman player Samantha Li Ka-man, 20, said sumo was just a ˇ§normal sportˇ¨ and anyone could take part in it. She said she did sumo wrestling simply because she liked it.
Sumo is being considered by enthusiasts a way to keep fit.
Tsang Kin-mo, 23, the bronze medalist in open-weight at the 8th Asian Sumo Championship in 2004, said he treated sumo as a way to train himself.
Junior wrestlers, meanwhile, said sumo had helped them improve concentration.
Pak Chi-faat, 13, said after learning sumo, he could concentrate more in class. He has practised the sport for two years. But at the beginning his parents did not support him to take up the sport. They were worried that his academic results might be affected if he spent too much time on sumo.
In Hong Kong , sumo has yet to be popular and it is difficult to promote the sport without sufficient funding, according to the Hong Kong Sumo Association. And there is only one official sumo court in the city where the association holds a training class on every Saturday night. The sport group says it will take some time before sumo is to become better known here.
Female wrestlers help each other to put on a mawashi before the game.
