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[ta0]

Of all the memories of worlds, which was in many ways a breakthrough contest, the most indelible is the camaraderie between all the different nationalities.  Salvador (Ketzaltlipoka), Omar (pplgrande) and myself were in full translating mod, but that was not enough.  Many had crash courses in either English or Spanish (including Mexican and Colombian idoms). Austen and Martha even conducted what may have been the first flirting using tops and an iphone translator (Austen ended up throwing big Colombian tops and Martha tricking US tops).  I don't remember seeing so much bartering and gifting of spinning tops and souvenirs.  S8 tops (even Sophias), large Colombian tops (even the ones used in the freestyles), the new Cometa Turbos with metal rings, Trompo Grandes, Tshirts, etc., changed hands like crazy.

Lots of more reporting coming soon.

[ta0]

Some incredible sights from worlds:

Seeing Salvador, long hair, sleeveless, with a large bat amulet pendant, come out of customs at the Orlando airport. He was followed 45 minutes later by the Colombians and then we found Gus and Carlos Solis by the shuttle area (they were waiting for the rest of the Cometa team that had missed the connection in Miami).  I had to pinch myself.  Having all of them in Orlando was like a dream.

Watching the Colombians throw their traditional tops with super-long ropes on the worlds stage (but hoping they did not aim towards the judges table!).

Taka taking the initiative to teach tops to some Japanese players while we were having the target combat.

Little Martha boomeranging Autograph on her first try. I am not sure who of the two weighs more.

Gus jumping in the center of a circle of two dozen hard core yo-yoers that were doing a throw-down after the awards ceremony, and getting them cheering with his combos of top tricks. Something like that had never happened before.

A Taiwanese fellow (who got his name?), dressed in traditional Taiwanese garb, trying an S8 top (he already knew how to throw tops) and learning new tricks.

The face of Mark Hayward when Gus challenged all of us to a boomerang (hand-duration) contest, giving himself a full 20 seconds handicap, and beating us hands down!  Several times in a row. He was using a standard Cometa top with no weight ring (still hand, no regens) and we (including Salvador, Mark and myself) using much heavier tops and longer strings.

Salvador teaching tops, what for him necessarily includes top-philosophy, to many players in awe of his skills, including a Malaysian, a Japanese (or Taiwanese ?) guy and many others.  He could start a cult if he wanted.

Takeshi doing top tricks at the Duncan show in Downtown Disney.  Guess who of the 6 international Duncan demonstrators got a line of kids after the show . . . ?

Dale Oliver's face when Salvador in the corkscrew challenge achieved a 10-wrap using a fixed-tip Premier Jumbo top.

A 4 inch plastic and steel top coming from the Cincinnati labs.  And a 2nd one. And then a much larger blue version. Wow! Damn if they don't play well! 

---
PS: It seems I lost my camera    But we had a lot of people taking photographs, so there should still be plenty posted.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Austen's translator app was fabulous!  I was there when he was discovering how handy and useful it was.  He is no dummy.  He used it a lot around our spinning area and perfected his technique before using it on Martha!  They were cute together.  You cannot help but fall in love with her giggle.  The clincher was when she boomeranged Autograph and began laughing and dancing!  There have been a lot of smiles and great reactions from people when they finally catch it but hers was a topper.

[ta0]

Here are the official results.

2013 Spintop Freestyles:

1	Gustavo Castro	_	MEX	mod	_	99.35
2	Tyler Young	_	USA	mod	_	99.26
3	Salvador Martinez	_	MEX	mod	_	71.23
4	Carlos Galvis	_	COL	trad	_	66.67
5	Carlos Solis	_	MEX	mod	_	60.20
6	Alex Torres	_	MEX	mod	_	57.63
7	Martha Gallo	_	COL	trad	_	41.36
8	Tom Connolly	_	USA	mod	_	23.23
9	Mike Hout	_	USA	mod	_	22.12
10	Rodrigo Arbelaez	_	COL	trad	_	16.11

Carlos Galvis took the special award for the best freestyle with a traditional top (solid wood top with fixed tip).

The raw results had 3 decimal points but I rounded them two 2 for the table. They probably should be rounded to 1 decimal point, which was the difference between Gus and Tyler.  That is a virtual draw. Just one extra or fewer click by one judge would have switched their places.  In hindsight, perhaps we should have called it a tie.

Before commenting specifically on the freestyles I want to watch them again, but I can say that it was a great show with plenty of difficult tricks, some never seen before.

I'll post sports division next.

[ta0]

2013 Spintop Sports (hybrid ladder)

1st overall	Eli Hickerson
1st 14 to 29 yr.	Eli Hickerson
1st 30 to 44 yr.	Miguel Angel Chavez
1st 45 to 104 yr.	Kirk Charles

Name	Age Div.	Score
Eli Hickerson	A	40
Miguel Angel Chavez	B	21
Kirk Charles	C	13
Mike Hickerson	C	12
Rene Martinez	A	11
Austen Hickerson	A	11?
Dave Schulte	B	10
Tim Simco	B	6
Bryce Benton	A	3

I am missing Austen's score sheet, so his score is a guess (I am sorry if I lowered).
Thanks to Bryce (YodaGuy5) for being gracious enough for participating even though he was not planning to and had not prepared.  I know that Jason (jrodriguez) was planning to enter but he got confused with the time. I think that if the sports division would have been later and not the very first event Saturday, we could have got more people trying it, like Taka, for example.

I think the hybrid format worked very well, specially for the public.  We did the Neff thing throughout the 1 point tricks and then we switched to players-choice with 3 misses and you are out.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Something that was posted somewhere had the ladder at 1:00.  Maybe that is what jrodriguez saw?  Sorry to hear that.

I watched the whole thing but could not exactly tell how the final standings would look.  All I know is that there were lots of smiles on stage and smiles in the audience.  I do not think we are used to so many happy faces up there during the ladder (except when Jack Ringca is participating). 

Eli was the man in this and just about everything he did all week.

How about that battle in the C bracket.  Kirk did a fantastic job overcoming his hand injury.  And Mike has to feel good about his efforts since he is always joking about how poorly he did in the past.  Not this year as the format seemed to be helpful for him.  His experience up there is also really starting to pay off.

I appreciate Dazzling Dave joining us for this.  He is a natural on stage.  Miguel also did well in the competition and interacting with the audience.  He was hilarious!

[ta0]

Gustavo's Freestyle:



You can tell he was not relaxed. He felt a lot of pressure, in part because everyone expected him to win, but also (from what I hear) because of his boss. Most of the misses were not in the difficult parts of the routine and were uncharacteristic. You can tell at the end that he is not happy and wanted to continue showing what he can really do.

At 2:11 the top actually bounces from the ceiling and comes down wobbling, thus the exclamations when he still catches it.  The trick he does 2:48 (Gustavina or Indiana Jones) I have been trying to learn since I visited him last year, without success. It is easy to forget that he is using a small under $10 plastic fixed-tip top.

[the Earl of Whirl]

The bounce off the ceiling that he caught was pretty spectacular. 

I was surely glad to not have to perform under the same pressure of a sponsor.  The Bikeway Bike Shop that I represented still doesn't even know that I represented them!!!

[ta0]

Tyler Young



Relaxed awesomeness, is how I would describe his freestyle (I wish I could sing while freestyling like he does.)  A few misses but a dynamite routine.  For example, the behind-the-back sun is new to me.

Salvador Martinez



Salvador looked really happy during his routine.  He later said that perhaps he was too relaxed.  It  is a pity he could not complete the elaborate (crazy!) foot combos he can do.

Carlos Galvis



How can you compare a freestyle with these tops with one with our tops? I am not sure.  But that was why we had the special Traditional freestyle award. And it was so great to have this style of play in the competition!

Carlos Solis



The last two-top trick went over the 3 minutes and did not count.  I could not help remembering Takeshi and his tangler.  Carlos told me that he wanted to do a trick that the yo-yoers would feel familiar with and demonstrate to them that similar things could be done with tops than with yo-yos (but personally, I don't share that approach).

Alex (Alejandro) Torres



Very good first-time freestyle.

[ta0]

Martha Gallo



First female we have had since Val retired.  Nice to watch.  In the main contest in Colombia (Caldas) they can get 50 girls competing!

Tom Connolly



This time he volunteered at the last minute without any pressure from us (well, there may have been a "sponsorship" T-shirt from YYJ involved). It is always fun to watch him on stage.

Mike Hout



If we could consider the overall difficulty, regardless of the fact that this was a top contest, we would have had to give him a huge score. Anyways, big points for going where nobody has gone before.  I wish I could have looked at the faces of the public (Mark could and he says they were with the mouths open).

Rodrigo Arbelaez



The apparent string snag he has at 1:10 is actually a top-like-a-yoyo trick that he later showed me (but at the time I assumed is was just a bad throw).  Singing and dancing If I ever freestyle again I will try to lip sing: it is nice to see a player who looks happy on stage. And I assured you, he was more than happy to be there after teaching thousands of kids to play tops over several decades.

[Kirk]

We just got home from Florida.

PS: It seems I lost my camera    But we had a lot of people taking photographs, so there should still be plenty posted.

Did you find it?  Rachel will post some images as soon as she can get caught up on her client photo work.

I think the hybrid format worked very well, specially for the public.  We did the Neff thing throughout the 1 point tricks and then we switched to players-choice with 3 misses and you are out.

Actually 2 misses.
I agree about how well the format worked. We could hear crowd reaction from stage. 
It is a thrill to get third overall, even if rather humbling to score less than 1/3rd of Eli's winning score.

[MrYo]

What i can say now... i really want to be with all of you, so many good and crazy people from every place of the planet, is something i dream since i start to throw a top. Tyler... i write to him, I'm realy proud of his passion, his play but the best thing is how he enjoy and shares the spintop play. Everyone in competition is a champ, i like them all!!!

Maurizio

P.S. still surfing the forum, drawing on cad and planning the future of Strummol8

[the Earl of Whirl]

Videos!  Where did you get these videos?  This is terrific.  I thought I would have to only imagine what I did (and let it get better and better like a fish story).

Thanks for your kind words about my freestyle.  It was the culmination of a year of work.  Still, I could do very little up until the last few weeks and then very inconsistently.  The under the leg while idling was something that was going so badly I was going to leave it out.  But while I was up there I said to myself "Where is your courage?" and it ended up being the turning point of my routine.  The upside down tricks seldom go this well and to have it be the finish, plus putting everything together.......I was stunned.  Still, I could not sing like Tyler! 

[ta0]

Videos!  Where did you get these videos? 

The youtube uploader wrote:

Spinning Top is really awesome!!! Everybody is so fantastic!
We're from Taiwan. Thank you for watching.

Did you find it?  Rachel will post some images as soon as she can get caught up on her client photo work.

That will be great. I still hope my camera appears. If not, there should be versions of most of the pictures I took in other cameras, but I may lose some of the ones for the Figaro Gallery    I know Tyler's dad took him photos with Figaro, and there are also photos of Figaro with the Colombians and the Mexican players. But I am not sure if there were other photos with Bryce and Jason.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Sorry about your camera.  I know you have worked hard for the specific shots you want.....especially the Figaro gallery.  Hope it turns up!

How exciting to have some top spinning enthusiasts from Taiwan!!!  That is a big surprise and my big smile of the day.