TOKYO—Ducking in and out of doorways, trying to surreptitiously tail a sumo wrestler after he steps across the threshold of his heya — stable — mainsail-sized kimono swishing, clicking along in clogs. My sumo wrestler must tilt the scales hard at close to 350 pounds, mountain of a boy-man with a Samurai top knot. While most of us would view sumo wrestlers as grotesquely obese, they’re not actually mounds of fat and competition requires immense agility. Except there are indeed lady sumo wrestlers — an estimated 20,000 of them, competing as amateurs, mostly Russians and Eastern Europeans. “People, they don’t like fat women, right?” one Japanese sports management professor was quoted last year in the New York Times.

Source: thestar August 06, 2021 20:15 UTC