The first decade of the millennium ends at full revolutions!

Nationals format changed from last year and following the example of Worlds it had two divisions, bearing tip and fixed tip, but with an overall champion. Darren Kim won both divisions and therefore the overall 2009 title. Miguel Correa was the runner up in the bearing division and Robert Gray in fixed tip.

Jan Dvořák won the Czech nationals edging Jakub Konečný. The format was three throws of 1 minute, best one counts. The first European spintop contest will take place in Prague, January 30-31 as part of the European yo-yo contest. The format will be three throws of up to 1 minute each.

The Ultimate Battletop Championship of the Universe took place after Nationals, again with an incredible trophy by Mark Hayward. For the first time a female won (Heidi). Interestingly, at the Denver Winter Tournament they replaced the spintop ladder with a battle top contest while tops could be used together with yo-yos in the freestyle.

I finally edited the video of the Corkscrew Challenge at Worlds (new world record.) By the way, the first Schreiber Shootout for players under 18 was won by Sam Neimeier (FL), 2nd was Kevin Newell (MA), and 3rd was Sean Micca (PA). The annual Whirled Top Festival (Miamisburg, Ohio) had 10 teams battling for $110 in gold coins (Top Toppers won).

Trompos Space is a new spintop manufacturer from Spain. It has a fixed tip model, Saturno, and a bearing model, Saturno Roller. This video by Gerardo Montero is a demo for the top. Their site has a spintop forum in Spanish. Another new spintop forum from that country is maintained by Jorge S., "Pulpowsky", from Madrid, and it includes his superbly detailed reviews.

Born Crucial, a company by yo-yo AAA champion Paul Yath has announced a future delrin top and selected the brand new national champion Darren as his spintop guy. Werrd, a yo-yo company from Australia, has announced a pair of tops. They seem to be of anodized aluminum, perhaps with a plastic crown. On their blog they are called Yikes and DidleySquat (!!).

Maurizio Petruccioli from Italy has developed a new delrin bearing top called S8 (Strummol8, black) or STB (SpinTopBeast, white) that has received very good reviews by all those who have tried the first batch. Some new Italian players are developing and the future looks bright for trottola players.

Trompos Cometa from Mexico finished a new successful campaign promoting tops in parts of Spain using the traditional demonstrator/contest format. Here is a video of demonstrator Salvador de la Rosa doing barrel rolls (átomos).

Major League Dreidel is a contest for longest finger spins of a dreidel organized by the manufacturers of the official "equipment" and a New York bar. Johnny Hei’z (John Heywood) beat 2008 winner Virtual Dreidel (Howard Pavony) to take the 2009 title, among 120 contestants. The "world record" seems to be a 17.88 seconds throw by 2007 champion Pamskee (Pamela Goldman.)

The second Wednesday of October every year is International Top Spinning Day. Here is a video collage assembled by Catherine S. showing many players.

The Mei-Hwa elementary school in Taiwan gives a top to every student on their first day of school and uses them to provide physical education while maintaining the Taiwanese spintop tradition. It even has a spintop museum. Don't miss this video.

A spintop group has grown around the physics department an the University of Cincinnati. John Marcus (with Mike on the photo) is the spintop craftsman in the group and makes tops of any size. He gave me as a gift "Holey Ta0" a custom top 4" top with a Taoist theme and side holes for a transparency effect.

I made spin decay measurements comparing a YYF Throwback and a (discontinued) YYJ Gates. The results were quite similar, specially at high speeds. Here is a graph and more details in this post.

The Duncan World Tour, including Takeshi, was in Colombia and here is a video with some tops including Colombian player Jeisson. And a demo of tops and yo-yos by Takeshi at VHYC09 (Hong Kong)..

See Gustavo Castro incredible demo of how to play soccer with a spintop. Catherine S. demonstrates Evil Knievel grinding trick in this video and Jakub K. shows Around-the-Arm on this one. See a great video of Chirs Neff using the P213 hybrids he makes and here shows the Zorro trick. Neff, who stared on the Duncan 2001 How-to-be-a-Player video, is back into tops and will be competing this year. Finally, Salvador shows Trampa de Seda [Silk Trap].

Salvador Martinez has started uploading spintop videos again (but the old ones are lost). He has a new regeneration trick he is calling Telarañas Eléctricas [Fishing Spiderwebs] while the trick he used to call like that is now Arañas Pescadoras [Fishing Spiders]. I have created a related but different regen trick called Spinning Spider. Salvador also posted another impossible trick: Maximum Spider.

For some nostalgia, see these great photos on top spinning at an elementary in Daggett, CA, in 1955, for a Life magazine article never published. Also of historical interest, here is the story of the Monarch top told by Watts and Olney themselves.

Mauro Sarti is an Italian artisan specializing in miniature finger tops. Also in Italy, there is a monument to the spintop in Montedoro, Sicilia. And here some commercial stylized finger tops from Henry Miller.

The Kongzhu or one-sided diabolo (one-wheeled diabolo, half-diabolo, monobolo) is a kind of top. A cool video, and another one.

See the Links page for other interesting spintop related sites.

tops from ta0

The old blogs go into the Top Spin page.