Beating, homesickness: tough path to the top for Georgian sumo star

The sumo champion hauls his giant frame from the ground, sand and clay caking his sweaty back and fury flashing from his eyes as he chastises himself for his defeat.

His 178-kilogramme (392-pound) body and white mawashi, or belt, are commonplace, but his bright blue eyes and Western features instantly mark out Georgia-born Levan Gorgadze as different in the traditional Japanese sport.

As a teen in 2006, Gorgadze left his mountain village in the Caucasus near the ancient Georgian city of Mtskheta for the bright lights of Tokyo, a city with 10 times as many people as his entire home country.

It hasn't been an easy path for Gorgadze, one of a growing number of foreign sumo stars, who has faced homesickness, injury and even being beaten with a golf club on his way to the top of the sport.

The quintessentially Japanese sport of sumo stops the whole country during the six big tournaments per year.

His story typifies the difficulties encountered by overseas sumos, who started making their mark in the 1980s and have to negotiate the sport's arch-conservatism and spartan lifestyle if they are to succeed.

'Fastidious rules'

Cloistered in a stable, or heya, in the Tokyo sumo district of Ryogoku, the wrestler's days are filled with chores and punishing early-morning training sessions.

One thing he does not lack is food: wrestlers have to consume gargantuan portions of chankonabe, a high-calorie stew designed to add bulk.

The heyas are one of the last vestiges of traditional Japanese life and there is no privacy -- the junior wrestlers eat, train and sleep as a group.

The wrestler's days are filled with chores and punishing early-morning training sessions.

Despite this, Gorgadze said that "at first, I felt sad and isolated... annoyed by the (obligatory) wearing of a kimono and fastidious rules".

He pined for his native village. "I couldn't speak Japanese... I didn't even have a mobile phone to call home."

Beaten over a kimono

The inspiration for Gorgadze came back in 2005 when he watched compatriot Kokkai, then a low-ranked 24-year-old, defeat Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu for the first time, a win that sent shockwaves through the sumo world.

As a junior judo star, Gorgadze took easily to sumo and trained initially at the prestigious club at Nihon University to become one of the sport's expanding cohort of foreigners.

The heyas are one of the last vestiges of traditional Japanese life and there is no privacy.

His journey to the rank of ozeki was not without incident, however. In 2011, he was one of three wrestlers beaten with a golf club for appearing in public without a kimono.

Agence France-Presse