AFTER two days of work, the mound rising centre-stage at the Hongkong Coliseum has been raked and pounded into shape ready to hold the weight of the 40 sumo wrestlers competing in the territory's first tournament at the weekend.
Known as a dohyo, the platform on which the wrestlers will tussle is made of two eight-tonne truckloads of New Territories soil mixed with cement and shaped by an eight-man team, including five ring announcers, or yobidashi.
Overseeing the construction is Masahiro , who has been building dohyos in his role as a yobidashi for the past 30 years.
The condition of the dohyo plays an important role in determining the professional fate of a sumo wrestler and Masahiro painstakingly monitors the construction and ratio of materials used.
''The most important thing in a dohyo is it has to be firm and quite hard to protect the wrestlers from injury,'' Masahiro said.
Although a traditional dohyo uses soil alone that is dried slowly to a firm surface, in the world of touring sumo where temporary rings must be constructed in a couple of days, traditional methods have been supplemented by modern materials.