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Oct. 16, 2025, 10:06 AM EDTBy Elmira AliievaLONDON — It’s safe to say they’re making their presence felt. Japan’s top sumo wrestlers were wandering the streets of London ahead of the sold-out Grand Sumo Tournament taking place this week at the Royal Albert Hall, the British capital’s famous Victorian concert venue. Dressed in traditional Japanese clothing, the wrestlers known as rikishi, have been exploring the city in between rigorous training for what is just the second event of this type to be held outside Japan in 1,500 years. Atamifuji Sakutaro sightseeing in London on Tuesday.Kyodo via APWearing traditional clothing, the wrestlers pass the gates of Buckingham Palace. Ryan Pierse / Getty ImagesThis time, the spotlight is on two highest-ranked wrestlers, known as yokozuna — Mongolian Hoshoryu Tomokatsu and Japan’s Onosato Daiki. Onosato, 25, became the 75th fighter to earn that title in May, having risen to the rank in a record 13 tournaments. His rival, Hoshoryu, was the 74th man to attain the rank.“I’m happy that sumo is back after so many years,” Onosato told Sky News, NBC News’ broadcasting partner, on Wednesday. “I hope I can show the U.K. fans how fantastic sumo is.”“Being a yokozuna has a lot of responsibility,” Hoshoryu said. “My uncle was a yokozuna — and I’m happy to follow in his footsteps. But I came here to London as a yokozuna which he didn’t, so I’m even happier,” he added. Stopping to pose for pictures with traditional souvenirs, the pair were among a group of sumo wrestlers who visited most of London’s touristic landmarks, including Buckingham Palace and Westminster with its iconic Big Ben.The rikishi at the tournament’s opening ceremony.Jordan Pettitt – PA Images / PA Images via Getty ImagesBut that didn’t stop them from their rigorous training routine and their equally rigorous eating regime. Their carefully structured, high-calorie meals are vital for building the size and strength needed to compete at the highest level.“We are going through 70 kilos of rice a day,” Donagh Collins, the CEO of Askonas Holt, an arts company which helped to organize the event, told Sky News. “Somebody told me that the wholesaler for the noodles has run out of noodles,” he added. But in a break from their traditional diet, some of the wrestlers were pictured enjoying London’s street food and feeding each other hot dogs as they explored the city. Hoshoryu feeds Onosato a hot dog near the Houses of Parliament. Ryan Pierse / Getty ImagesWhile the tournament in London was completely sold out, back home Sumo has faced a series of scandals, including allegations of bullying, assault and sexism at stables where the wrestlers train. Allegations of illegal betting and links to organized crime have also cast a shadow over the image of Japan’s national sport. But in London, Wednesday saw the first day of the five-day exhibition tournament — the first of its kind since one was hosted at the same venue some 34 years ago. The tournament was watched by a sellout crowd. Ryan Pierse / Getty ImagesTobizaru throws salt before his match against Shonannoumi.Ryan Pierse / Getty ImagesOnosato lifts Ura during their bout Wednesday. Ryan Pierse / Getty ImagesThe wrestlers, who weigh a combined six tons, slapped, gripped and lifted each other, as spectators reveled at the sight of the centuries-old Japanese sport. Around eleven tons of clay were brought into the hall to build the dohyo, the raised ring where the wrestlers compete, outlined with rice bales shaped and secured using beer bottles, according to Reuters.The two grand champions, Hoshoryu and Onosato, each secured victory in their bouts, closing the evening with weighty performances — literally. Elmira AliievaElmira Aliieva is an NBC News intern based in London.

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Oct. 26, 2025, 6:30 AM EDTBy Corky SiemaszkoThe Russian chess master accused by his peers of bullying Daniel Naroditsky, the U.S. grandmaster who was found dead last week, has himself been hit with unfounded cheating allegations in the past — a 2006 chess scandal that came to be known as “Toiletgate.”The manager of Vladimir Kramnik’s opponent in that title match, Veselin Topalov, claimed the Russian was using the bathroom up to 50 times per match to surreptitiously look up chess moves on a computer — a charge that Kramnik’s manager hotly denied.“It should also be mentioned that Mr. Kramnik has to drink a lot of water during the games” and likes to pace in the bathroom, Carsten Hansel added, according to news reports.Kramnik eventually won the match and became the undisputed World Champion of chess, but only after agreeing to World Chess Federation (FIDE) demands that he use the same bathroom as his opponent. It was a concession Kramnik initially protested with a sit-in near the bathroom, causing him to forfeit one of the games in the match.Later, Topalov and his manager were sanctioned by the FIDE Ethics Commission for “making unsubstantiated accusations of cheating.”Kramnik, responding to an NBC News request for comment on the renewed interest in “Toiletgate,” said in an email on Friday, “Since I always played fair throughout my career, this insinuation didn’t bother me much, I took it quite lightly.”Since Kramnik had repeatedly suggested Naroditsky had cheated, his own brush with what turned out to be apparently baseless allegations resurfaced this week in the wake of Naroditsky’s death. A cause of death for Naroditsky has not been announced. “It is a bit ironic for someone like Kramnik, who had been accused of cheating, to then turn around and accuse somebody else of cheating,” Erik Allebest, CEO of Chess.com, which is the largest chess platform in the world, said Friday.Young chess champ found deadNaroditsky, 29, was found dead Sunday at his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Police on Thursday said they were investigating his death as a possible suicide or drug overdose.FIDE said it would investigate whether Kramnik should be disciplined for the disparaging public statements he made “before and after the tragic death” of Naroditsky.During his last livestream on Saturday, Naroditsky told his audience that the cheating claims by Kramnik, whom he once idolized, had taken a toll on him.Daniel Naroditsky.Kelly Centrelli / Charlotte Chess Center“Ever since the Kramnik stuff, I feel like if I start doing well, people assume the worst of intentions,” he said.Chess.com banned Kramnik in 2023 from taking part in prize tournaments after he accused multiple players of cheating, said Allebest.Kramnik has claimed to be the “subject of a bullying and slandering PR campaign,” as well as ongoing threats to him and his family since Monday. That was when the Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced on social media that he had died.The Russian has also denied bullying Naroditsky and said in an email Friday that his lawyers were “preparing a major case against every media resource publishing this false information.”Do chess players cheat?Allebest acknowledged there is cheating in competitive chess.“It’s just a human thing and it’s the same with any sport,” he said. “For some the rewards of winning outweigh the cost to their consciences. For some it’s monetary, although it’s rare that the prize money is that big.”Among other things, Chess.com runs weekly online money matches where players can take home up to $3,000.“It’s not big money,” Allebest said. “More often, players will be cheating to gain notoriety, to boost their streaming audience, to rise in the rankings and get famous by taking on the best players. It’s a perception thing.”Those matches, he said, are also closely monitored.“For players competing in prize money matches, we have a monitoring program called Proctor that they download that keeps track of what’s going on on their computers,” Allebest said. “We have front and rear-facing cameras to monitor the players.”Now that so much chess is played online, the cheating methods have also gone digital.“They’ll use computer algorithms to determine the best move, they’ll have a second program running on their computer while the game is being played,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll have somebody sitting next to them with an iPad looking up the best moves.”So Chess.com looks for red flags.“We have statistical models that help us identify possible cheaters,” Allebest said. “For example, if a new player signs up and suddenly starts winning a lot of games in a row, or whose ranking starts climbing fast, or if we detect other factors that we cannot disclose, we will look into it.”In their most recent “Fair Play Update” from September, Chess.com reported that 125,000 accounts were “closed for cheating.”‘Painful’ allegationsStarting in October 2024, Kramnik publicly accused Naroditsky of cheating in online chess, suggesting his near-perfect play was “statistically impossible.”Allebest said statistics don’t always tell the whole story.Russian chess Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik in Paris in 2016.Joel Saget / AFP / Getty Images file“The thing that often gets forgotten is that in statistics, lightning does, sometimes, strike twice,” Allebest said. “When you have 20 million games being played every day, a one in a million chance thing happens every day. Some players, especially old guard players who didn’t grow up playing online chess, often find that hard to understand.”Allebest said he gets why Naroditsky, a child prodigy, might have felt despondent in the face of accusations leveled at him by a world-renowned player like Kramnik.“It is painful for players like Danya to be accused of cheating because since they were young they put in hours and hours and hours of work,” he said, referring to Naroditsky by his nickname. “For some, that all gets thrown into the garbage by an accusation. For players who view chess as sacred, it hurts them in the soul.”Corky SiemaszkoCorky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.

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