S is for… Sumo

I’m spending a few days in Tokyo next month, and as my trip coincides with one of the three sumo tournaments held in the capital each year, I thought it’d be a good chance to check out one of the world’s oldest sports.

The rules of sumo

Sumo bouts take place in a (dohyō) ring, which measures 4.55 metres in diameter. The two wrestlers position themselves behind white lines on either side of the ring, and the bout begins when both wrestlers jump up from a crouching position after simultaneously touching the surface of the ring with both of their fists. The winner of a sumo bout is either:

• The first wrestler to force his opponent to step out of the ring.

• The first wrestler to force his opponent to touch the ground with any part of his body other than the bottom of his feet.

Two wrestlers get ready to compete

The matches are usually over in a matter of seconds, however on occasion they can last for several minutes.

Professional sumo

The Japan Sumo Association runs professional sumo, and there are six divisions in sumo containing approximately 700 wrestlers at any one time. The top ranked makuuchi division gathers the most attention, with wrestlers in the makuuchi division ranked according to past performances. At the very top of the ranking system is the yokozuna, who are expected to compete for and regularly win tournaments. There have been 69 yokozuna in history, with the promotion criteria to that level being very strict.

There are six Grand Sumo tournaments held each year, with three held in Toyko, and one held in each of Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. Each tournament lasts for 15 days, with the wrestlers in the top two divisions having one match per day. The wrestler who wins the most bouts over the fifteen days wins the tournament championship for his division, with a play-off deciding the winner if two or more wrestlers are tied.


I'm genuinely excited about getting the chance to see my first sumo competition next month, and hope that it lives up to my expectations. I'll be providing some further thoughts on the sport after I've had the opportunity to experience it first-hand.

R is for... Referees

Who want to be a referee? It’s a question I think most sports fans have asked at one point or another. Referees or umpires get little praise when they do their job well, whereas every questionable decision is scrutinised to a high degree. In many sports they receive regular vocal abuse from the crowds, and on occasions have even received death threats after performing their job.

The human element

In an ideal world officials would never affect the outcome of the sporting contest they were presiding over, even if every decision they make isn’t perfect. However we all know that this doesn’t always happen; sometimes genuinely bad decisions are made which can have big consequences.

Many of the decisions referees make in sports are genuinely difficult. The laws of our sports can be interpreted in different ways, and many factors need to be weighed up in a short amount of time. For example, whilst an offside decision in football will usually be straight-forward, a mistimed tackle may be more difficult to judge; how much intent was there in the foul, was it dangerous, did it cause any damage, and did it deny a goal-scoring opportunity? All this needs to be weighed up quickly as the referee makes their decision in real-time.

As fans, we need to accept that referees aren’t perfect and sometimes will make decisions we disagree with. We have to believe that these officials are trying their best to be impartial at all times and are making the best decision given the information they have in all moments. As long as we have faith that they’re trying to do a good job, then that’s good enough for me.

Home bias

In 2007, a study of 5000 English Premier League games revealed that referees instinctively favour the home team in sports, to the extent that for every 10,000 extra people in the crowd the home team has the equivalent of a 0.1 goal advantage. This news didn’t come as much of a surprise to sports fans, with many believing that the study actually underestimated this effect. Further studies have also proved that decisions are affected by crowd noise, with officials more willing to give contentious decisions when the crowd is louder.

It’s my firm belief that this bias isn’t intentional in any way, but is purely created by crowd pressure. Outside forces clearly have an unfortunate influence on some decisions. As much as they’d like to believe they’re not affected by it, umpires don’t like to receive abuse from thousands of people in a crowd, so subconsciously this might swing a lineball decision one way in an umpire's mind. This is clearly represented in interstate matches in the AFL where many close calls are made by the umpires, and where the free kick count is often heavily weighted towards the home team.

The technological debate

The use of technology in sport to assist officials has become more widespread in the past decade; however some sports have embraced the use of technology more than others. Tennis and cricket have perhaps had the biggest changes, with both sports implementing review systems where the players are given a couple of reviews to challenge decisions they’re unhappy with. In both sports I’d say the change has been a success, although perhaps more so in tennis than cricket where there’s less grey area with the decisions. The review systems have also shown how consistently good the umpires in both sports are, with the majority of decisions challenged staying with the umpire’s call.

Football (soccer) has been particularly reluctant to use technology, however a series of high profile referee errors that could’ve been easily been overturned have led FIFA to look closely at how technology could help their officials make the right calls. Personally, I think the simplest and best solution is to use video replays. It’s relatively inexpensive, wouldn’t take too much time, and in nearly all cases the correct decision will be reached.

In general, I think the officials do a really good job in our sports and should be praised more often than they are. I understand why fans get frustrated when they feel decisions don’t go their way, but we have to hope questionable decisions are balanced out in the long term and give the officials some leniency. As for technology, I think that anything that can help ensure the correct decision is reached more often is a good thing, provided it doesn’t take up too much time and affect the flow of the sport.

Q is for... quitting

One of the hardest things in life is to keep going when all logical reason is telling you to stop. When your mind or body is screaming out telling you give up. However many great champions in sport and life are simply people who can resist that urge, who just don’t know when they’re beat. Here are some of my favourite quotes about quitting:

I hated every minute of training, but I said, "Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."
Muhammed Ali

A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
Napoleon Hill

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
Lance Armstrong

It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired - you quit when the gorilla is tired.
Robert Strauss

It's always too early to quit.
Norman Vincent Peale

Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don't quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don't quit until you reach it. Never quit.

Bear Bryant

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.
Ross Perot

P is for… Practise makes perfect

In his book Outsiders: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell theorises that it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practise to really master a subject area or skill. Whilst there are some obvious exceptions to this rule, in most cases it seems to hold true. Even the most talented of individuals usually have to put in thousands of hours of practise to make the most of their abilities.

Beckham practicing his skills

When I think of the above, my mind often turns to sport. On his way to becoming one of the best dead ball specialists in football, David Beckham was reported to have practiced 500 free kicks a day whilst growing up, And for all their physical traits, the Williams sisters also played tennis for 6 hours a day, 6 days a week to hone their skills with the racquet. To become the best you also need to work phenomenally hard, that much is without doubt.

However getting to the top is one thing, and staying there is another. The truly great champions of our sports, those who we’ll enjoy telling our grandchildren about, continue to work hard and push themselves to new heights even when they’re at the top of their games.

As an example, Gary Ablett Jr could have rested on his laurels in his mid-20s after a stellar few years in the AFL. He’d been voted the AFL MVP for a record 3 successive seasons, had picked up 2 Premierships with his childhood team, and he’d captured the game’s highest individual honour, the Brownlow Medal. However instead of being satisfied with his lot, he challenged himself by moving to a new start-up team, becoming their inaugural captain. He’s started this season in phenomenal form, picking up 127 possessions and kicking 6 goals in just 3 games. It seems improbable that he’ll carry on in this vein for too long, but if anyone can, this future AFL legend is certainly capable of doing so.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite sporting stories. Daley Thompson is one of Britain’s greatest ever athletes, winning gold medals in the decathlon in both the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics. However his success didn’t come easily, he also worked phenomenally hard to fulfill his potential. Always looking to get an advantage over his opponents, Daley would even train on Christmas Day. However, knowing that his rivals might also be training on that day, he’d make sure he did 2 or 3 hard sessions each December 25, believing that might just give him the edge over his rivals. That sort of dedication is why he became an Olympic champion, and should serve as a reminder to us all.

O is for… the Olympic Games

The Olympics is unarguably the greatest sporting show on Earth, hosting two weeks of spectacular sporting action and drama every four years. However the Games are not without their faults, coming under regular criticism for a variety of reasons. So how could they be improved?

Throw out the undeserving sports

Should tennis really be an Olympic sport?

The Olympics should be the pinnacle of all 35 sports represented under its umbrella. However whilst this is true for most of these 35 sports, for a number of them it isn't. Tennis doesn’t need to be represented at the Olympics; it’s a high profile sport in its own right, and the four Grand Slam tournaments are the true pinnacle of the sport. Similarly, the addition of golf to the Olympic roster in 2016 is farcical. Ask any golfer which event they’d rather win, and any of the four majors would be picked well before the Olympics.

Football is a slightly different case, as I can see no reason for the inclusion of the men’s tournament, but believe the women’s tournament should remain in place. On the men’s side, the tournament is an under-23 tournament, with 3 'overage' players bizarrely allowed to be included in each squad. It’s far from the pinnacle of the sport, with both club tournaments and other major international tournaments seen as significantly more important around the world. On the women’s side however, the competition has no age restrictions, and along with the World Cup is clearly the top priority for all international players. 

Get even tougher on drugs

Sharron Davies - cheated out of Olympic gold

I’ve already touched on drugs in a previous a-z post, so I’ll try to keep things simple here. The IOC needs to rigorously test every medalist in every sport. Also, as new drugs often go unfound by testing methods, the blood of every medalist needs to be kept and tested routinely over a period of time following the event (say every 5 years over 20 years). 

Athletes should be promoted into medal positions if drug cheats are caught at any period of time, not just during the Games. It’s baffling that the claims of some athletes who should’ve won gold medals – such as the British swimmer Sharron Davies – should be ignored by the IOC, when they were clearly cheated out of medals by other athletes who have since admitted to using banned substances.

Try to ensure all judging is fair

A number of Olympic events, including gymnastics and diving, are still decided by a panel of judges. Whilst this produces the correct result in most instances, dodgy decisions still occur and need to be fully investigated. In the last two Olympic Games controversies have dogged the gymnastics competitions, with one of the Chinese athletes winning a medal in the vault competition in Beijing despite landing on her knees. Whilst there is no perfect way to measure gymnastics scores (which is why we need judges), suspicions still remain that politics play their part in deciding where some medals head.

Roy Jones Jr loses despite clearly dominating

Amateur boxing has had even bigger problems with its scoring system, with suspicious results and questionable scoring occurring at nearly every Olympic Games. At the last Olympic Games a gold medal bout went the way of a Chinese fighter (Zhang Xiaoping) to give the country their first boxing gold, despite his opponent having seemingly got the better of the contest. Hometown decisions aren’t unusual in boxing terms, but it’s extremely disappointing to see them in the Olympics. One of the most infamous Olympic moments occurred in this manner in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, with a South Korean boxer winning gold despite clearly being beaten by his opponent, Roy Jones Jr. This amazing article from the Guardian covers that decision in full detail.

Despite these minor quibbles, I do think things are slowly improving at the Olympic Games. We seem to be gradually moving away from the heyday of drug-taking in sports of the late 1980s, and dubious decisions and scoring controversies have become less frequent in recent years. However I do feel this process could be quickened, and hope that the IOC is stronger than ever with their actions this summer

N is for... Names

Some athlete’s names hint at greatness before they’ve ever performed, whilst others never fail to raise a smile. Here’s my selection of some of the most wonderfully-monikered athletes:

George Best - one of the best!

George Best – As one of the greatest footballers of all time, the former-Manchester United winger certainly lived up to his name on the pitch.

Steele Sidebottom – Collingwood’s half-forward deservedly won the ‘Name of the Year’ award in 2010.

Daniele ‘Danny’ Invincible – Mr. Invicible’s career never quite matched his name, with the journeyman Australian footballer now plying his trade in the Thai Premier League.

Zinedine Zidane – With a name like his, Zidane couldn’t have been an average footballer… and thankfully he wasn’t.

Picabo Street – A personal favourite of mine, Picabo was an American skier whose name means “shining waters”.

Usain Bolt – The fastest man on earth has been given the appropriate nickname of “lightning”. Expect more lightning quick performances from Bolt in the Olympics this summer.

Jharal Yow Yeh – The Brisbane Bronco’s rugby league star has one of the best names in Australian sport, creating headlines such as “Wow wee, Yow Yeh”

Do you have any favourite names from sports, or elsewhere? And do you think having an unusual name can inspire a child to greatness, or does it do more damage than good?

M is for... Momentum

You can’t see or feel it, and no amount of money can buy it, but it’s something every sports team and player wants. Momentum is fast becoming one of sport’s biggest buzz words, with many coaches and players referencing it consistently in press conferences. But how do teams get momentum, and is it as important as it’s made out to be?

The mythical zone

There’s an argument in sports that momentum doesn’t really mean much, that when teams go on hot streaks it’s all within the statistical probability of what we should expect. Whilst the statistical element can’t be denied – scoring streaks do fit comfortably within a normal distribution – there’s more to it than just that. When a team or player gains momentum they also gain confidence, which causes them to make more good decisions. This creates a positive cycle, which increases the likelihood of more good things happening for them. Also, when a sportsperson is performing at the peak of their abilities and they’re full of confidence, they can enter the mythical ‘zone’.

Ayrton Senna - one of the greatest

In psychology, flow is “the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” When an athlete is in the zone they’re essentially in flow; everything is aligned to produce the optimum results. The tasks they have to perform become almost second nature, and anything, however difficult, suddenly seems immediately possible. The great racing driver, Ayrton Senna, described how being in the zone felt at the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix:

“I was already on pole, [...] and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel." 

How to turn around momentum

A momentum shift usually occurs with a precipitating event, such as a fumble or mis-hit, or a moment of inspiration. This can cause a change in the mindset of the athletes involved, which leads to a change in behavior and outcome. As such there’s no magical solution to turn around momentum; as with most things in life it requires hard work, dedication and a little bit of luck. Perhaps the most important factor is to remain positive, because when you start to doubt yourself you’re more likely to make poor decisions which won’t bring about the necessary precipitating event. 

Experienced athletes have been shown to be better at handling the ups and downs of sport than novices, and are thus often better at limiting the effects when the opposition has momentum. Whilst it may sound obvious, the key really is to keep doing the right things with a positive mindset, which gives you the maximum possibility of creating the necessary momentum shift  

In summary

Whilst momentum in sports is in essence a psychological thing, its importance is obvious to anyone who regularly plays or watches sport. The growing increase in sports psychology is a sign of this - if you can prepare a team to have a steady, positive mental attitude you'll have already taken the first step towards victory. Whilst momentum is not the be all and end all, it's certainly one of the most important factors in sport.