New champion, new record, new and old tops, new sites

Jon Gates won just a few hours ago his second World Spinning Top Championship. He had won in 2000 and he is the current US champion. Congratulations! Mike Hout got silver and Tom Connolly got bronze. Due to a last minute emergency I could not travel to Orlando this year. In fact, Mike was the only one of last year seven freestyle finalists to compete this year.

At worlds there was a contest to establish a record of "most corkscrew wraps." This will be the first "world spinning top record" to be certified by the future Spintop Players InterNational (SPIN) federation. The winner was also Jon with 9 wraps (tied with Alan Gray but had fewer attempts). The trophy was designed by Jim Boehm so that it could only be spun after using it as a corkscrew to open a bottle! It was made by spintop turner Phillipe from Bourgogne, France.

Yoyojam has just unveiled the prototype of its new large production top. It is a truly revolutionary top, as it is made of laser-cut thin sections of wood plus an aluminum ring. It will be the largest (and more expensive) performance production top ever, about 4" (10 cm) diameter and 5" (12.5 cm) tall. It will come with fix and bearing tips. The bearing tip will have the bearing inside the tip, as previous YYJ tops. Those that tried it at worlds say it is "sweet". According to Jon, in spite of the size it plays very similar to a "Gates" (it is hollow) . It will probably be available by the time of the US nationals, but production runs may be small. The expected price is between $75 and $100.

Cyril Mermilliod from Paris has one of the largest spinning top collections in the world. Here is a video Jim took on a visit. From antique automatons to ornate toupie hollandaise tables, thousands of wonderful tops in this private museum. My head is spinning!

Here is great video of Gerardo from Mexico in which he names several of the tricks he uses in freestyle (in Spanish).

Two excellent Japanese Koma trick resources are available. Komaspace by Yuuya is a professional looking site, now translated to English. It has descriptions and videos of many tricks plus diverse background material. Don't miss this demo clip by Yuuya himself. The other resource is a group of close to 100 videos on youtube by user komanotaketyan (Taketyan of the spinning tops). Many of the tricks they do are similar to the ones we perform with Western tops. But the traditional koma has no groove on the tip (and it is always fixed-tip, of course) what makes these tricks much more impressive. Some of the clips were recorded at the Nagoya museum.

Do you want to see a nice spintop combo filmed in real slow motion? Here it is by Taka.

Do you want to see a nice spintop combo filmed in 3D? Here it is by Chad Lunders (you will need red-blue anaglyph 3D glasses).

Moreno Bartolini is an Italian who makes and plays with old fashioned tops and does the "medieval/renaissance show" circuit in Europe. In this long (100MB) wmv video he demonstrates how the first rudimentary lathes worked.

Is this the first recorded picture of a boomerang? :-)

On June 17 the US Postal Service issued commemorative stamps in honor of designers Charles and Ray Eames. One of the stamps has a spintop motif as it refers to their short movie from 1969, "Tops".

I like finding wounds of old top battles. This top has a conical tip patented in 1910. But the crater marks on the crown were obviously made by a top with a spherical tip, also popular at the time.

Throwing a glass spinning top can give a great rush. I threw this vintage Avor glass candy container like a normal top and I could boomerang it without problem.

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