Late but Good Spin

Worlds will have a different format this year. There will be two different styles of play, each one with its own freestyle and crowning a world champion: bearing tip and fixed tip (rules). In addition, the sport ladder rules have changed and new tricks were added.

I experimented again with a fire top. The design is the same one that I used a few years ago but I replaced the Hollow Point with the bottom of a Quick Silver. I tried it at the Texas Jugglefest (video) but I still need to work on it.

Dr. Hiroshiro Tada performs a spintop act (video) around San Louis, specially near the famous arch. The professor of mechanical engineering maintains the Japanese tradition of koma-mawashi taking his act from place to place in a cart. In Japan itself, Shuraku Chikushi has been maintaining the 450 year-old tradition of Hakata koma for the last three decades, the first women Hataka master in 160 years (English interview, Japanese official site). The tradition requires her to make her own tops, preserve the history and perform.

Salvador Martinez is a superb spintop player from Mexico City. He is a pupil of Gustavo Castro but has already invented several regeneration tricks (called in Mexico "cuerdas" = strings). See for example this video or others in his youtube account.

The 2nd South Moravia (Czech Republic) spintop contest had the following results: 1: Vaclav Kroutil, 2: Ondrej Sedivy, 3: Jan Novotny, 4: Daniel Konečný, 5: Jan Pelant. Here is a video. The format was a three-throw format, similar to the one to be used this year at the Bay Area Classic.

Here is a compilation of vintage but spectacular tricks by Matt Ritter.

For the third collaborative video we had to change some of the tricks from the Spintastics 24-trick patch. Here is the list. There is time until september to send me video clips.

Catherine S. made a good video tutorial showing the fixed tip tops available in the US.

The Argentinean artist (living in Mexico) M. A. Ríos has made some incredible but at the same time foreboding audiovisual presentations with white and black battling tops: "On the Edge" and "Aquí." A teaser of the documentary about the filming of Aquí can be seen here.

In Tarragona, Spain, as part of the Santa Tecla celebration (around September 22nd), there is some sort of spintop contest: they have already reached the 30th edition. Check out these spintop costumes by dancers that entertain the crowd during the contest.

There is a second video of a visit to Cyril Mermilloid's collection of antique spinning tops, located south of Paris, one of the largest in the world.

Music with tops? Here is a video of Didier Malherbe with the Hadouk trio playing Toupie Tambour.

Komanotaketyan uploaded an incredible version of the Takeshi tangler using a pair of koma he throws simultaneously with one hand!

Yoyofactory has made a limited release of its new tops (only available directly from them): Throwback and Acrobat. These are ultra-high performance bearing tops (with fixed tip options) and prices to match ($100). The Throwback has a shape reminiscent of a Gates and it is extremely stable, a veritable spintop gyroscope. The Acrobat has a higher center of gravity and it is easier to lean for freestyle tricks. A collectors version of the Throwback ($150) comes in a display case with a card that is a throwback to 60´s Duncan cards.

Visit the forum at topspinning.com.

See the Links page for other interesting spintop related sites.

tops from ta0

The old blogs go into the Top Spin page.