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[ta0]

Waiting in Seattle after traveling back in time (left at 2PM on Monday from Shanghai and arrived at 10AM to Seattle the same Monday).

Kanta took home a lot of hardware:



The medals provided by the contest were very nice: they could be converted into working yo-yos! It would have been nice to get 3rd place just for that.

[Mermouy]

Sorry, I don't make it over here too often! 

I really enjoyed seeing the tops as usual. However as usual I felt a good bit of anxiety watching them. So many missed tricks, and so frantic!

That rushed pace to get in as many elements as possible in 3 minutes, seems so contrary to the nature of top play. I wish the format could be changed.

Didn't someone suggest a taking turns type of format? Each player could get X amount of time to complete one trick or combo, and then the next player would get a turn for x number of rounds. IDK, just seems like top competition should be handled differently than yo-yo competition.

I agree with that, I'm sure we could find a more tops suitable format for contests, for this we should maybe re-considers the ideas posted last few months about separating from yoyo contests, yes there's many things to take care of and the contest would obviously be smaller (in term of infrastructure) than it is at the moment, but aren't we also a smaller community after all?

In my opinion, a more complete contest, I mean with at least the 3 main top styles of play (tricks but also precision and fight), should be considered...

I know that all this has already been discussed and that we chose not to change but this contest let me with a bitter taste in mouth... Too fast, too small, too limited for what tops could be...

Sorry for being so negative, but I wanted to say it at least once, even if, of course, I enjoyed the videos...

PS: Looking at the videos again, I'm not sure about first and second place...

[the Earl of Whirl]

Nice picture of Kanta with his hardware.  Did we get any comments from the winner?  Or anything from the runner-up?  I know the language barrier is a factor but I always enjoy hearing from the contestants.  I sure would love to hear Taka's reflections on the competition and his new style of spinning.  I would love to hear from Rob, too, about his participation and what he saw during the competition.

[ta0]

Well, I'm a home and I finally watched the videos. I hadn't realized that I wasn't the only one to miss so much more than in practice. I saw Kanta do two consecutive body wraps without fail in practice and on the freestyle he tries two times without succeeding. Ju's koma soloham was a killer, even just seen him mount it was very impressive, but on the freestyle he cannot even start it. Taka misses the traditional tricks he normally performs without a drop. Watching myself I look very tight and second guessing my moves. But missing the tops while doing roller coaster or a simple frontal trapeze mount must mean I was more nervous (or tired) than I thought. I saw everybody's practice and we should have done much better than we did on stage 

The Japanese have been able to adapt many of the modern Western tricks to koma. For example, both Ju and Kata did a horizontal corkscrew (Vortex), although they change the direction on the arm. And the body corkscrew is Colombian (but I don't recall seeing the consecutive ones that Kanta was doing in practice.

I guess I cannot let this be my last freestyle, so I will have to freestyle again and try to redeem myself a bit 

[ta0]

I heard a rumor that should make Attila happy: it's almost certain that in 2020 the WYYC will be in Hungary! 

In US customs in Seattle I met Andrew Bergen, a great yo-yo player (current US 1A champ, I believe, and 14th at worlds). He commented about Kanta and reminded me that he had once freestyled in tops (before my time, 2003 I think). I told him he should freestyle with tops again and he said he might. He did say that he needed to get some good string 
Jim: you should try to convince Quentin to do the same. By the way, I couldn't believe Quentin did not go to the 4A finals.

[SuperTaiyaki]

I'm kind of curious what Kanta can do with just a kendama, that was a nice juggle.

@Ta0: Nice kick start!

The yoyoers were missing a lot of tricks too, even the aliens like Rei Iwakura were missing stuff. Was there something up with the stage that was tripping competitors up? Evan Nagao also commented about getting food poisoning...

[the Earl of Whirl]

Was it warm in the performance hall?  How was the humidity there?  If I remember correctly, it was warm at worlds in the Czech Republic and that affected things.

[ta0]

Was it warm in the performance hall?  How was the humidity there?  If I remember correctly, it was warm at worlds in the Czech Republic and that affected things.

The stage itself felt fine, although the backstage was hot and humid. The lights bothered a bit if you threw high while facing to the front. Farid complained about them.

These are Ju's tops:



They are high-end Spingear komas. Many of Kanta's komas were also from Taka, but lower end (no bearings).

[jim in paris]

Happiness runs in a circular motion!


copyright Mike the Hout

so does playing tops or simply top-play

we had the cycle revolving around the spinology dvd and duncan vids
then came S8 : a new world of wonder
a little later arrived the Mexican style with gus,gerardo salvador etc,and the Colombians'
the rebound came from Neff Tyler Daniel Jakub pushing the level of play even further
more recently thanks to Jorge's contact in Nagoya and Ludo' efforts to promote the toupies du monde
we got to know the taiwan style ,the koma play ,plus Larry's connection with the Gasing tradition


the styles of play are changing,melting,evolving

the world spintop contest MUST  evolve too

jim

[robtsou]

In US customs in Seattle I met Andrew Bergen, a great yo-yo player (current US 1A champ, I believe, and 14th at worlds). He commented about Kanta and reminded me that he had once freestyled in tops (before my time, 2003 I think). I told him he should freestyle with tops again and he said he might. He did say that he needed to get some good string 

I talked to Andrew before the contest and he told me the same thing. And he's pretty handy with a top to boot!  He was throwing mine doing some GT type tricks, he was pretty good.  He did say he wasn't a fan of regen tricks though.  I was going to buy a top and give it to him but there were no tops for sale at the contest!  I thought for sure YYF would have brought some but they didn't.

I don't know if there was anything really wrong with the stage in China.  It wasn't overly hot or anything in the hall although the hallway that you had to wait in was lacking in the AC department.  The overhead lights definitely got in your eyes though if you had to look up for anything.

Despite being utterly unprepared and completely out of my depth and league, I still had a good time once I managed to get over my embarrassment for such poor performances on such a large stage.

And, I've finally started to get a feel for regens!

Thanks, Tao for not giving me too hard a time.  I think I could feel Dale being embarrassed for all the top players in the world while I was doing my "freestyle". Ah well, it was an experience to be sure.

[ta0]

Among the 1.4 billion people in China, at the moment we took this picture, these were perhaps the best spintop trick players 



I wish we'd had many other handsome (and not so handsome) players attending: it was great fun. I imagine there are several good and perhaps not so good players kicking themselves at a missed opportunity to place high at a world contest in China. But as they say, you need to buy at least one ticket to have a chance to win the lottery.   

[the Earl of Whirl]

From my experience at competitions and practices, I have a feeling that the problem was not the stage or the competition area but the space you had to wait in before the competition.  I am only talking about this so we can learn from it and respond better in the future.  Once moisture gets in the string, it does not come out very quickly.  I think there was enough heat and humidity back there to affect the top people as well as the yoyoers.  The fan I had for a number of years was very helpful with moisture from hands but it probably would not have made much difference backstage with the string.  Sorry everyone had to struggle with that.

[mailman]

For those of us with less experience....what problems are caused by moisture in the string?

[jmadrigal]

For those of us with less experience....what problems are caused by moisture in the string?

For me the string becomes unpredictable and grabby. I also like the string to slide through my fingers nicely for regenerative play. Its difficult to do the tricks alone much more on stage and then add on humidity on top. I feel for the competitors.

[ta0]

If I was going to find an excuse in my case, I would probably have to say it was jet lag. Every afternoon around 1PM it hit me and I had to shake it off. I thought I was ok when I started the freestyle, but maybe no. But, truthfully, I had barely practiced for worlds. The first time I did the routine to music was the day before in the hotel room. By the way, the event hotel was not very conducive to playing tops. The only two places to do it were the official practice room and the outdoor terrace. But the first one was crowded by yo-yo players most of the time and the terrace could only be used in the evenings when it was not under the direct sun. By the way, there was a lot of security people in the hotel controlling what we did. It was impossible to sneak into an empty room to practice, as I have done multiple times in other venues. Actually, the whole country seemed to be under tight surveillance. But at least it had the result that Shanghai appeared to be very safe.

As big as Shanghai is (24 million, perhaps the biggest proper city in the world), it does not have many touristy spots. It does have an extensive subway and also taxis are quite cheap. Fortunately, all street signs, and also in the subway, are written in western characters below the Chinese symbols. But don't expect to give a taxi driver an address written in something other than Chinese characters and understand you. Few people speak English, so the language communication is a problem. Although it has a very impressive skyline, my favorite place was the park where I met the kongzhu players. More about that later.           


(yea, I didn't have a top with me  )