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[jim in paris]

 bearing-tops / open debate

hi all


a new generation of spintops with a roller bearing started to be marketed at the end
of the 1990 ties :
they soon became popular with the blizzard ,the bearing king ,
 the trompo grande and others.
a multitude of new tricks and experiments were developed along the years,
mach 5 ,gyro flop , corkscrew , top tangler ...etc
but finally ,not many bearing tops were used at a competitive level,
mostly due to the impossibility of regenerating the top,
in fact they consume too much time during a freestyle
in order to compensate this weakness , one-way bearings were introduced
on the market and a number of players adopted them with some success

today, the rules for freestyles allow any type of top,
but hardly any competitor at Worlds has been using a bearing top
in the past ten years ...except for Taka of course ;-)


wooden'it be time to re-introduce a bearing-top category
thus encouraging the development of new tricks ?
 


jim

[Texture]

I believe some of the other koma players use bearing komas, but I'm not 100% percent sure.

I would be all for the idea of a bearing- top category. 

[Jun]

I used some bearing koma in the contest this year(white ones have a bearing).

[ta0]

Currently I feel that we don't need a separate bearing division. Although some tricks may be better with fixed or bearing, or sometimes only possible with one, the bulk of a freestyle would be common tricks to both. We did try it for two years (2014 and 2015) but they were mostly the same players competing on both.

Lately I'm thinking it may make sense to make divisions by weight: very light "toy" tops (e.g. "Mexican" plastic), medium weight "performance" tops (e.g. S8) and heavy/large tops.

[Taka]

Good point.
I also wonder why bearing top disappearing now in competition.

I think there is a kind of gentleman's agreement between players there.

I do not know scoring detail but i think if we put 10pcs bearing top in front and change top 1 by 1,can have more score than 1 top regen style.(Kanta approve it with fixed Koma).
So disappear bearing top is not because of the rule,I think.
Koma community faced similar situation before.I developed bearing Koma,but player does not like it.one is expensive,the other reason is too different what they want to do.It can do more than fixed,but they love fixed tip.

Talking about this year,most of player do not care about score but just have fun and show off their skill in the video,maybe. So no reason why use bearing top and do "normal" tricks.If we have huge prizes or money, the game will change.
So far no force, so player just play what they want to do.The winner get honor, so no reason why they do something to win against their desire.
Jun want to be the winner, so he analyze rule and show regen and bearing koma in 1 routine. Very cleaver routine.
Kanta wants to be a winner but same time he looks want to have fun with Koma in front of people ,natural entertainer.
I am happy to see this year competition.Important thing is they have some message to try to reach to us.

I have respect the player who use bearing top to win,but regeneration is one of the hard core how to having fun with tops as we know.
Use bearing or not can be free choice and we need improve more thing other than categorization.