THEY'RE NOT BIG, but Hong Kong's women sumo wrestlers are unquestionably clever.
Although they didn't win any medals at the recent Shinsumo World Championships in Japan, the three-woman team put up a brave fight against contestants who sometimes outweighed them by more than 110kg.
'The team is quite strong, but part of that strength is that we're a lot smaller than some of our opponents, so we're quicker on our feet. That makes us hard to beat,' says Mak Ka-po, a law student at the University of Hong Kong. 'Anyway, it's not necessarily size that wins a sumo match. You have to be clever and think fast to work out your opponent's weaknesses and take advantage of that.
'That's one of the main appeals of the sport for me.'
Just 155cm tall and weighing 55kg, Mak was the lightest of the 48 women in last Sunday's championships in Sakai city, near Osaka.
Until recently, sumo was a strictly male preserve. Even today, the thought of a woman stepping into the raised clay dohyo, or ring, raises frowns among sumo purists.