worlds in Mallorca/news

[ta0]

[ta0]

The vibe during the contest was great and the general public was very enthusiastic.
The internet connection was not good enough to live stream but the routines were recorded by several cameras and will be posted online.

Kanta became the first player ever to win the title 4 times. He has grown up but his skill and stage presence remain undiminished. He got a big ovation from the public.
Jun's score was close to Kanta, he was extremely good.
Yahir arrived from Mexico the day of contestst at 2AM and played with jet lag, what was a big handicap. But he still did great.
Great routines by Xisco, Skye, Quentin and Nobu.

[ta0]

And article on today's newspaper mentioning yesterday winners and announcing today's festival.

[jim in paris]

very good article
save a copy for the press book !

bravo à  tout les compétiteurs

jim

[the Earl of Whirl]

Glad to hear it was such a great success.  Congratulations to all!!!

[ta0]

I'm going to the airport in a couple of hours. We had a wonderful contest on Friday, Baldufa festival on Saturday, post-festival at Pollença's beach on Sunday and post-post-festival at Guillem' s place in the center of the island (Inca) on Monday.


Photo by Kanta

[ortwin]

The top most picture in your last post ta0: are those the 10 top ranked players in both categories? Could be from those I recognise.

[Mark Leithead]

Great photos, great updates, great times!

I'm looking forward to seeing the freestyles 

[ta0]

I traveled the whole day yesterday and today I'm trying to catch up with emails and work. I will post much more later. I hope to have the official videos online by the end of the week. I'll post the complete results tonight. But there are lots of posts on social media about the event. Taka used #wstc24 as hashtag.

The whole event, competition plus festival plus extra activities, left me with a big smile in my face. Lots of thanks to Guillem and Xisco for the logistics and to all the competitors and top aficionados that made it possible. One of the best spintop meetings ever.

[ta0]

The official results can be seen here:

https://spintops.org/2024-mallorca-results/

For the Traditional division, Jun was also a judge, in addition to Jakub, Guillem and me.


Photo by Jun

I want to note that Jun was voted first by 2 of the 3 judges in Open, but with scores almost tied. So the third judge who had a higher spread flipped their positions. It was a close finish!

Congratulations to the winners. Also to every competitor for having the courage to get on stage: a dropped top is a very obvious error so it takes guts to freestyle. I specially want to commend Jorge and Rocco who didn't feel well prepared but still did it for the public.

PS: At the event the scores posted for the Open division were slightly different due to an entry error. However, the only ranking impact was a swap between the 10th and 11th positions.

[ta0]

I guess I forgot to mention that there were also events on Thursday. We did demos both at the venue and at the main plaza of Port Pollença:



The Paella popular just outside the venue, free for Top people (Guillem and Xisco's girlfriends cooking):



You always know when Aperino is around:

[jim in paris]

hello Jorge

thanx for the reports and photos ! you all look GREAT 

as you wrote it is not an easy thing to go on stage : a Big Up and virtual shake-hand to all competitors !

I am eager to watch the freestyles

bye

jim

[ta0]

The Baldufa Olympics on Saturday consisted on the following events:

1. Spin on Hand
The basic competition of longest spin on the hand from a boomerang. But it was not clarified that the top should be fixed tip, and Taka used his hybrid koma-yoyo top which has a bearing tip and won. Second place was Eleazar, the boss of Chido Trompo, who inverted a little top into a stick (the Girabolo trick but with a long stick replacing the pen). The real winner in my opinion was Jun, who threw a very hard boomerang with his koma (plus I guess komas have lower air friction.)

2. Faster draw in the west (winding behind back)
At the start you show the top on one hand and the string on the other. At the signal you wind it behind the back as fast as possible and then throw a boomerang. Jun  wrapped the string just three times around the stem of his koma and threw it, easily beating everybody. To me it was fair but others complained.

3. Top on Spoon Race
Race around a track with a top spinning on a spoon held by the mouth. To make it more challenging, part of the players ran in one direction and others in the opposite direction so they tended to collide. I think Guillem won this one.





4. Regeneration tricks call out
You start regenerating and you have to make the tricks called. The last one not dropping wins. Stand on one foot, kneel down, pass behind the back . . .  pirouette, behind the back whip. The last standing were Kanta and Guillem and Guillem won.

5. Music chairs
Everybody walks around the target while spinning around themselves. When the music stops you throw to the target. If you succeed, you pass to the next round, with a smaller target. A rule had to be added to penalize those throwing late (and knocking others out). Guillem won.

6. Highest suicide
First each competitor took a turn to throw it and those who caught it went to the next round. Those were divided in two groups and on each one they threw simultaneously. Three players went to the finals but only Rocco caught it, so he was the automatic winner. Interestingly, he was using a beauty of a wooden top (a Quebracho top, more later) that could have split if he missed!



7. Body battle
Like the club battles in juggling, you try to keep the top from falling while trying to make other people drop. But only hip pushes were allowed, not touching the string or the top of the competitors. There were 4 round to select the finalists. I managed to qualify to the finals by just staying stealthy on one corner while the rest fought. Guillem was the winner (he has only lost one year on this event).

Guillem was the overall winner.

[ta0]

Saturday there were shows by the Brazilian Projeto Nutar and by Krumpir (Devadip).

Nutar is composed of 3 cool guys (from left to right): Matias Donoso (half-Chilean/half-Brazilian), Emerson Noise ("Chacho", 100% Brazilian) and Valentin Flamini (Argentinian):



Their show has large component of music/singing/dancing in addition to tops. It's geared more towards children, but I really enjoyed it.

]

Devadip did his show with tops on a giraffe unicycle show to great success:

[ta0]

A nice clip made by Nutar showing some of the spirit of the festival:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBZmO4kvLGr