Coming up this week: Sumo takes over London’s Royal Albert Hall, Liverpool and Manchester United lock horns, and Cape Town races toward marathon Major status. Here’s your Inside Track to the global sports action over the next few days.
SUMO
From opera to oshi-dashi, Sumo steals the spotlight at the Royal Albert Hall
Forget high Cs and velvet gowns. This weekend, London’s Royal Albert Hall swaps opera for oof! as 150 kilos of pure sumo muscle crash down where Pavarotti once soared. London’s most operatic room will echo not with arias but with shiko stomps and salt tosses as 40 rikishi — the name for sumo wrestlers in Japan — turn Kensington’s grand old hall into a coliseum of clash and ceremony.
It’s a unicorn event — only the second time Japan’s Grand Sumo Tournament has ventured abroad. The last was back in 1991. Same hall, same drama, but this time it’s bigger and bolder.
Sumo’s lineage stretches back 1,500 years. It is part sport, part sacred ritual — theatre, religion and brute force bound in silk. The bouts are brief, but the build-up is epic: parades of warriors, solemn purifications, then the crouch, the glare, and the thunderous charge.
And what grander stage than the Royal Albert Hall — that red-brick temple to performance where Wagner, Eric Clapton and the Dalai Lama have all drawn a crowd?
Both of the sport’s biggest stars, Hoshoryu Tomokatsu and Onosato Daiki, have made the trip. Onosato’s emergence as a first Japanese grand champion in six years has played a large part in a recent boom in popularity. Tickets are hard to come by in Japan, but almost impossible to obtain in London. A special “thank you” banner, used only when every available seat has been sold, is already hanging proudly from one wall of the hall.
The Grand Sumo Tournament, The Royal Albert Hall, London — October 15-19
SOCCER
Old enemies, new turmoil as Liverpool and Man United meet
The international break starved football fans of their Premier League fix, but the action returns with a bang this weekend as Liverpool host Manchester United in what remains one of the sport’s great rivalries.
For two decades, Liverpool looked up at their tormentors from Old Trafford after then United manager Alex Ferguson famously vowed to “knock them off their perch.” But in recent years, it is the men from Merseyside who have done the gloating, peering down the league table and recalling United’s glory years with a mixture of amusement and pity.
Last season, Liverpool were the runaway champions while United limped home a miserable 15th — their lowest finish since 1974, when they were last relegated.
Liverpool began the defence of their crown briskly enough, if not beautifully, while United stumbled, grumbled and toyed with sacking their new manager, Ruben Amorim, almost before he had time to unpack his boxes.
But football’s moods shift fast. Liverpool suddenly find themselves wobbling, with back-to-back league defeats bookending a Champions League loss to Galatasaray. United, by contrast, have stumbled into two wins in three and a faint flicker of hope that Amorim’s project might just be taking shape.
If there’s one thing this fixture guarantees, it’s that form and line-ups go out the window — matches like this are decided by spirit, chaos and a touch of fate.
Liverpool v Manchester United, Anfield Stadium, Liverpool — October 19
MARATHON
Cape Town racing toward Major status and a place among the elite
The Cape Town Marathon returns on Sunday in what organisers hope will be its final stride towards joining the prestigious Abbott World Marathon Majors alongside iconic races in London, New York, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo.
This year’s 24,000 entries were snapped up in double-quick time in what has become an increasingly popular event with runners from around the world.
South Africa’s ultra-running queen Gerda Steyn headlines the women’s field as she returns to a race close to her heart. Steyn held the course record before Glenrose Xaba’s 2:22:22 run last year smashed the 2021 mark. Kenya’s Winfridah Moseti and Angela Tanui, along with Ethiopia’s Mare Dibaba, promise a fierce contest. In the men’s race, new national record holder Elroy Gelant (2:05:36) will test himself against Kenya’s Ronald Korit (2:04:22) and Bethwel Chumba Kibet (2:04:37), with Ethiopia’s Boki Kebede Asefa also in the mix.
In 2024, the race cleared Stage 1 of the World Marathon Majors’ multi-year assessment, which evaluates everything from race-day operations and the experience for participants to the calibre of the elite field of runners, who earn points based on their performances and compete for overall series titles.
The focus in 2025 now shifts to successfully completing Stage 2 — the final hurdle before Cape Town can claim its place among the world’s Majors in 2026.
But it’s not just prestige that drives Cape Town’s ambitions. Organisers say that Major status could bring more than 20,000 international visitors each year, transforming the South African city into a global running destination and delivering a windfall for the local economy.
Cape Town Marathon, Cape Town, South Africa — October 19
EXTRA TIME
What else we’re watching
Triathlon: Antonio Arimany marks his first year as World Triathlon president at Saturday’s Congress in Australia, but it has been anything but smooth sailing and he is likely to face more heat this weekend.
Seven months into the job, the Spaniard faced an independent report branding triathlon governance a splintered mess, followed by a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling that fellow board member Liber Garcia breached anti-corruption rules in the run-up to Arimany’s own election. CAS called it “minor,” but critics, including Australia’s Michelle Cooper and Triathlon Canada’s Peter McCrory, cried foul, while Denmark’s Mads Freund has filed motions to expel Garcia and launch a full inquiry. Arimany insists he has “nothing to hide,” telling Reuters this week that he welcomes healthy debate and describing the uproar as “some noise over the last 12 months.” Expect plenty more of it when the Congress convenes on Saturday alongside the sport’s world championships finale.
American Football: A third of the way into the NFL season, few would have predicted that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts would be sitting atop their conferences. Quarterback Baker Mayfield has turned back the clock in Tampa, guiding the Bucs to a 5-1 record with 12 touchdowns, just one interception, and a blend of arm strength and scrambling that’s put him firmly in the early MVP conversation. Over in the AFC division, the Colts have quietly built a 5-1 record of their own under quarterback Daniel Jones, combining balance and belief ahead of a tricky road test against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Ice Hockey: The reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers kick off a busy day of NHL action on Saturday when they visit the struggling Buffalo Sabres, who have not made the playoffs for an NHL-record 14 consecutive seasons. Six of Canada’s seven teams will also be in action, including an Edmonton Oilers squad led by three-times NHL Most Valuable Player Connor McDavid. The 13-game slate will conclude when Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins visit the San Jose Sharks.
Athletics: Ethiopia’s Shure Demise returns to the streets of Toronto on Sunday chasing history at the Waterfront Marathon, where a third victory would make her only the third athlete to win three or more times in Canada’s biggest city. The 2015 and 2016 champion has since shone on the global stage — she’s delivered podium finishes in Chicago and Tokyo — before a two-year break to have a daughter. Back in flying form, she dominated April’s Milan Marathon and now aims to etch her name alongside Kenya’s Philemon Rono and four-time winner Kenneth Mungara in Toronto’s record books.
Motor Racing: Austin’s Circuit of the Americas hosts the second of the season’s three Formula One races in the United States, with McLaren – which retained the constructors’ title two weeks ago in Singapore – now fully focused on winning their first drivers’ championship since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. Australian Oscar Piastri is 22 points clear of British teammate Lando Norris with six rounds and three sprint races to go. The battle has been mostly polite so far, but how long will that last? This weekend includes a sprint, meaning more points are available.
Rallying: The World Rally Championship hits the asphalted roads of central Europe — Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic — with Toyota’s eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier leading the way. The Frenchman is two points clear of Welsh teammate Elfyn Evans with Toyota’s double world champion Kalle Rovanpera, who is switching to circuit racing at the end of the season, third and 21 points off the lead.
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Editing by Yasmeen Serhan and Toby Chopra; Illustration by Jeremy Schultz