YoYo Related News From Around The World
YoYoRecreation player Ryosuke Iwasawa took home 1st Place in the 1A Open division at the 2015 European YoYo Championship…so what better way to celebrate than with a top-quality video filmed in Krakow, Poland where the contest was held?
Stunning professional quality footage from YoYoRecreation, as always!
Check out full results below for the 1A Open Freestyle division at the 2015 European YoYo Championship!
Poland-based superhero team Backspin just became even stronger than before. US national 3A champion Patrick Borgerding, and Japanese string trick wizard Ryosuke Iwasawa are the newest members of the super elite team.
Backspin, whose mission is to spread and promote yoyoing, already had Plamek, Ben Conde, Dávid Molnár, and World Champion János Karancz in its roster, and the new additions strengthen the team’s position as a global force.
Next year’s EYYC will also be co-organized by Backspin, and judging by the team’s past efforts, we are indeed very excited about the contest in 2014!
Another freestyle from the 2013 Alternative Freestyle Invitational, here we have a great performance by Ryosuke Iwasawa.
The East Japan Yo-yo Contest B-Block regional was held earlier today in Kawasaki.
Ryosuke Iwasawa won the strong 1A division, ahead of Reiki Sekiya and Atsunori Tanimoto. 4A and 5A also had very strong players taking the title, with Naoto Okada and Sora Ishikawa winning their respective divisions.
Check the full results below, courtesy of Yama18. Videos courtesy C3YoYoDesign.
IrParlor.jp just dropped this fantastic video featuring Ryosuke Iwasawa. Fantastic style and trick construction from a modern master.
Day 1 of the 2015 World Yo-yo Contest comes to an end after a marathon of over 250 players going through the wildcard round for all divisions! Here are the results!
As expected, this was a tough and cruel round for the 169 players competing for a spot in tomorrow’s preliminaries. Only 33 players made it through, with some of the crowd favorites failing to advance. The American players did a great job, with six players (Andrew Bergen, Colin Beckford, Eric Tran-Ton, Clint Armstrong, Kevin Nicholas, and Lucas Gremler) among the qualified, along with two contestants from China (Pisco and Weichuan Wang) and one from Hong Kong (Benson Fok). Among those who failed to make the cut were Vashek Kroutil, Hidemasa Senba, Eric Koloski, and Ryosuke Iwasawa.
These are the qualified players in 1A:
Full results for 1A can be found here.
With only one player outside Japan competing in the wildcard round, it’s no surprise that all eleven qualified players are Japanese. We hoped 1999 World Champion Takumi Nagase would make it, but he was unable to match the speed of the current 2A generation.
3A has been improving at a fast pace, and the times when just being able to throw double-trapeze were enough to be competitive are long gone. Almost all of the competitors in the 3A wildcard round are Japanese, but Ayoun Kuo from Taiwan managed to squeeze into the next round!
There are a lot of people who want Rei Iwakura’s spot as king of offstring! No less than forty-two players competed in this division, including a handful from the world’s 4A elite! Ben Conde, Bryan Figueroa, and Naoto Okada had no trouble making it to the preliminary round, while two-time World Champion Eiji Okuyama, and Atsushi Yamada both failed to make it through in this tough division.
Counterweight is the contest’s smallest division, and while the number of contestants was small, we are super excited about the players who are competing, and even though 2004 World Champion Makoto Numagami was unable to make it through, the wildcard ranking is led by two equally legendary names: Hiroyasu “Pon” Ishihara, and 2001 World Champion Shingo Terada!
The full list for 2A-5A can be found here.
Stay tuned for more updates from the greatest contest ever!
We’re now less than two weeks away from the greatest event in yo-yo history, folks! The first ever World Yo-yo Contest in Asia, and the first time the Japanese elite will have the home field advantage!
Over five hundred contestants, and no less than twenty one current and former World Champions will be competing, including a handful of legends!
Japan predictably has the biggest number of competitors, with over half of the registered players, but there’s also a hefty number of players from other Asian countries, which were often under-represented at Worlds, such as South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. But even players literally from across the globe will be competing, with one player each from Brazil and Uruguay.
Let’s take a look at the top contenders from each division!
Gentry Stein, the only non-Japanese defending champion, will face tough competition this year, as one would expect from a World Yo-yo Contest in Japan.
Among the former champions, Hiroyuki Suzuki is surely the most successful, and while last year he had to climb to the finals starting from the Wildcard round, he’ll have a shorter path this year, as one of the seeds from AP.
Two other World Champions, János Karancz, and Marcus Koh, are also seeded to the semi-final round, while 2008 champion John Ando, and 2009 champion Shinya Kido are among the 180 (!) players in the 1A wildcard round.
Other notable players that will have to make it through the crowd are a couple of crowd favorites, such as Hidemasa Semba, Ryosuke Iwasawa, Takahiro Iizuka, and Vashek Kroutil.
The strongest contenders in 1A are concentrated in the preliminary and semi-final rounds, where we find some of the World’s best. From Asia, Iori Yamaki, Takeshi Matsuura, Yusuke Otsuka, Ahmad Kharisma, and Christopher Chia. From the Americas, Zach Gormley, Ky Zizan, and Mexican power duo Paul Kerbel and Luis Enrique Villasenor. Finally, Europe sends some of their best, with Palli Gudmundsson, and the young European Champion Jakub Dekan.
Will we see a battle among the favorites? Or is there are surprise lurking among the 268 1A players? We’ll find out in a few days!
The two greatest 2A winners of all time meet at the World Yo-yo Contest stage again for the first time since 2011! Current champion Takuma Yamamoto will face tough competition this year, not only from the legend himself, Shinji Saito, but also from 2012 World Champion Shu Takada! But the surprise among the 2A champions comes straight from history books!
Takumi Nagase, THP legend and 1999 World Champion (that’s pre-Orlando, folks!), is among the wildcard players, adding even more flair to this year’s Worlds!
Other notable players in this division are Hiraku Fujii, a legend in his own right, and Kiwamu Ebata, with his distinctive style. In addition to these, more than fifty other players, mostly Japanese, are registered, showing us that 2A is far from dead!
Hajime Miura was unable to get top 3 at this year’s Japan Nationals; or was he saving the good stuff for Worlds? We’ll find out in a few days, as the current World Champion tries to defend his title for the first time!
Three-time World Champion and last year’s runner-up Hank Freeman is surely among the favorites for the title, as is 2010 champion Minato Furuta, but with 3A advancing in broad strides in the past couple of years, picking a winner is no easy task!
Japanese champion Tomoya Kurita is competing for the first time at the World Yo-yo Contest, and is one to keep an eye on. Mizuki Takimoto has competed at Worlds before, and should feel a bit more comfortable with the competition.
Contrasting with the precision of the Japanese players, Patrick Borgerding and Ng Wang Kit are known to go for the risky maneuvers, and should they land their bangers, they could have a shot at top 3.
Rei Iwakura needs no introduction. The defending champion should be everybody’s top pick for this year’s 4A division after last year’s perfect routine and a couple of new tricks teased online this year.
But being the favorite doesn’t make the competition any easier. Michael Nakamura had a fast and solid routine last year, and comes from respectable wins at the Las Vegas Open and BAC.
Two other World Champions will be competing: Tsubasa Onishi starts the competition on the preliminary round, while Naoto Okada will have to take the long path from the wildcard round.
Almost eighty players will be competing in this division, including some of the top offstring contenders, such as Bryan Figueroa, Naoto Onishi, and Zac Rubino, as well as crowd-pleasers Ben Conde, Jeon Ji Hwan, and Futoshi Maruyama. A very interesting division for sure!
1A and 5A machine Takeshi Matsuura only competed in (and won) 1A at Japan Nationals this year, so we’re sure to be treated with new tricks in his 5A routine at Worlds! Not only that, Takeshi winning two major divisions at Worlds in the same year is in everybody’s wish list after getting so close last year!
2007 World Champion Tyler Severance comes from a series of solid results from US Nationals and BAC. This is also the debut of his new yo-yo company, Recess Intl, and he’ll surely put on that extra effort for his brand!
Two legendary 5A names stand out amidst the wildcard contestants. Former World Champions Shingo Terada and Makoto Numagami decided to join the competition! Competitive 5A is a completely different beast from what it was in the early 2000s, but here’s hoping they make it to the later stages of the competition and bless us with some of their outstanding and beautiful yoyoing.
Among those aiming for the title, last year’s runner-up Jake Elliott is the top contender, followed closely by Hideo Ishida, and Sora Ishikawa.
This is the contest we’ve all been looking forward to! The World Yo-yo Contest will finally be held in the holy land of yoyoing! Who will be the winners of the greatest yo-yo contest in history? We’re about to find out!
Check out some great footage of Team YoYoRecreation, filmed around the 2014 44Clash event.
Featuring Takahiro Iizuka, Iori Yamaki, Kenji Eto, Hirotaka Akiba, Takumi Yasumoto, Hiroyasu Ishihara, Yuusuke Ootsuka, Kento Muraoka, Mizuki Takimoto, Akitoshi Tokubuchi, Ryota Torigoe, Ahmad Kharisma, Tatsuya Fujisaka, Sojun Miyamura, Hiro Irifune, Ryosuke Iwasawa, Izuru Hasumi, and Kensuke Goto.
Results are in for the 1A Division Wildcard round, where non-seeded players had 30 seconds in a private judging session to advance to the next round of the 1A Division! Some amazing players made it through from YoYoFactory, CLYW, YoYoJam, and more!
28 Victor Shevchenko Russia 48.4
29 Nicholas de Valpine United States 48.1
30 Victor Gravitsky Russia 47.7
31 Alexey Vandakurov Russia 47.5
32 Daniel Dietz United States 47.1
33 John Votrubec Czech Republic 47.0
34 Michael Malik Czech Republic 47.0
35 Matthew Poon United States 46.5
36 Ondřej Horák Czech Republic 46.5
37 Tomáš Vyletěl Czech Republic 46.4
38 Eric Koloski United States 45.5
39 Evgeniy Kochergin Russia 44.1
40 Leonid Nemchik Russia 43.6
41 Dylan Benharris United States 43.6
42 Yuan-Ching Yang Taiwan 43.4
43 Ricardo Marechal Brazil 43.4
44 Gábor Kocsis Hungary 42.6
45 Dmitry Akinshin Russia 42.5 45
46 Renjie Lv China 42.5
47 Wilson Van Gundy United States 42.3
48 Alex Berenguel United States 41.8
49 Norbert Janowiec Slovakia 41.6
50 Borys Radziszewski Poland 41.0
51 Ondřej Dolejš Czech Republic 40.9
52 Chingiz Alpyspayev Kazachastan 40.1
53 Matej Hatala Slovakia 38.3
54 Hans Wong-Jensen Singapore 38.1
55 Alexander Bachvarov Bulgaria 37.6
56 Gergő Priately 37.5
57 Ann Connolly United States 36.9
58 Ky Zizan United States 36.4
59 Michael Nakamura United States 36.4
60 Justin Weber United States 35.3
61 William El Sawalhi 34.1
62 Brian Leung Pak Wai China / Hong Kong 32.9
63 Maciej Janiak Poland 32.5
64 Aaron Bendich United States 32.2
65 Andrey Glukhov Russia 31.7
66 Rodrigo Yokota Brazil 31.0
67 Elliot Ogawa United States 29.9
68 Li Ho Kwan Hong Kong 29.6
69 Alexey Khaynovskiy 29.3
70 Simone Capurro Italy 28.4
71 Honza Bui 27.5
72 Filip Pietraszewski Poland 26.6
73 Hunter Gormley United States 25.9
74 Jakub Mozgawa Poland 25.7
75 Kryštof Kuchař Czech Republic 25.0
76 Simon Blount United Kingdom 23.5
77 Mathias Ditlefsen 22.3
78 Chih Min Tuan Vietnam 22.2
79 Oleg Matveev Russia 22.0
80 Isaac Kanarek Mexico 21.9
81 Adam Reeder United States 21.6
82 Ma Hailin China 21.5
83 Andy Jones United Kingdom 21.0
84 Federico Zermian Italy 17.4
85 Patrik Foldvari 15.8
86 Piotr Jerczynski Poland 14.4
87 Marco De Lucia Italy 14.2
88 Sara D’Amato Italy 13.8
89 George Wollaston United Kingdom 12.4
90 Michael Gleockner 7.4
91 Quentin Lefrancois France 7.1
92 Andreas G. Nie Germany 3.1
It didn’t take long after the launch of Instagram video for yo-yo players around the world to start sharing their tricks in ≤15-second bursts. The hashtag #trickcircle started popping up, and there have been over a hundred yoyo tricks posted under that label in the past three months. We here at @YoyoNews have been monitoring that tag closely, and are now endeavoring to bring you the choicest morsels of instagoodness every week with a #trickcircle roundup. Want your 15 seconds of fame? Study these well, and start shooting…
This trick from @yoyoingadam (AKA Adam Brewster of CLYW) is called “Kefka’s Tower”, intended to be part of his Final Fantasy series showcased in “Eleven” but left off until “The Only Thing Worth Saying”. Adam’s always had a gift for creating (& naming) new elements, and the central feature of this one is something he calls a Portal. In his words: “A brother to the folding gate concept: with a ‘portal’ the yoyo breaks plane as it’s pushed through a gap in the mount, instead of remaining stationary while the mount folds over it as with a gate trick.” Gates (folding the string formation over/under a yoyo) are a relatively underused triangle entrance, and the pushiness of the portal gives the concept new energy. A frontstyle combo was the natural choice for the best view of the off-plane movement, and Adam ties the rest of the moves together nicely.
@werrdtranton (AKA Eric Tranton of Werrd) brings us a short & sweet sequence blending some recent favorites. He opens with a regen popularized in Gentry Stein’s winning US Nats 2013 freestyle: a bind caught in the off-hand, which is then tossed up and regenerated into… well, for Gentry it was a split-bottom mount, but where Eric really ups the ante is landing in a four-point star. This one might be hard to learn without slomo, but the concept is definitely one worth exploring, and maybe if you study some Ryosuke Iwasawa videos you’ll come around to your own variation.
@raygstl (AKA Ray Godefroid, AKA Baby Bear Treezy) takes us into the future with a 3D 5A trick that reminds me of a cross between Red’s double pinwheel sequences and the Red Rocket spintop trick. The root concept of the trick—up/down off-plane 3D pinwheels—is more than cool enough on its own, but there are some subtleties and that imply a lot of room for growth. My personal favorite part of the trick actually lies at the very beginning, as Ray uses a smooth & subtle rejection to enter the trick, which builds the proper amount of momentum while simultaneously creating a tantalizing bit of slack just begging to be incorporated in a tech combo. Ray naturally ends the combo with a bucket, the traditional endpoint for tricks with horizontal dice movement.
Let’s take a quick trip across the Pacific for a monster of a trick from @sakatuca, AKA Tsukasa Takatsu of One Drop. He’s been making jaws drop this year with his dense, intricate chopsticks tricks, merging a Japanese sense of trick economy with the technical sensibilities of Mark Montgomery and Sid Seed. As you can see in this clip, though, Tsukasa is much more than just a fusion of his influences and has fresh ideas to spare: the opening mount alone should be enough to keep you busy for the week, a herculean magic drop/chopsticks/bucket conglomeration that looks borderline impossible on a fullsize yoyo. In addition to being mindnumbingly difficult, this mount sets up a sequence of visually stunning slacks that form the backbone of the trick. The strongest impression I took away from this trick is the way a well-placed slack manipulation can break up the pace of a combo and raise the impact of the other elements.
We’ll wrap this week up with a trick from YoyoNews favorite @david0ung, AKA David Ung of Yoyofactory. This combo is a takeoff of a lesser known Spencer Berry trick, Inhale, a sister trick to his masterwork Breath, first seen in Debt in Knowledge. Inhale works off of the idea of setting up a hanging potential GT knot halfway down the string, something played with by luminaries like Kohta, and then resolves the snag by swinging the yoyo through. David applies his own spin to the concept at every stage of the trick, from setting up the knot with a GT chopsticks slack to resolving with a risky triangle suicide. The best part of the trick, though, may be how much restraint is used: both David and Spencer let the elements speak for themselves, using subtle mounts that invite the viewer to really study what’s happening instead of getting caught up in flash or needless technical flourishes. Also, did we mention that this trick is hard? It’s so freakin’ hard.
Tune in next week, and don’t forget to follow @YoyoNews on Instagram and tag your insta-clips with #trickcircle for a chance to be featured!
YoYoRecreation put together a solid video of their team at the 2013 World YoYo Contest…beautifully shot and edited, and top-notch play from one of the best contest teams in the world! Featuring Yusuke Otsuka, Izuru Hasumi, Ryota Ogi, Iori Yamaki, Yasuki Tachibana, Minato Furuta, Naoto Okada, Tatsuya Fujisaka, Akitoshi Tokubuchi, Samm Scott, Ahmad Kharisma, and Ryosuke Iwasawa, with a special appearance by the Rosen Plaza carpet.
We’ve just reported the addition of Patrick Borgerding and Ryosuke Iwasawa to Backspin, but it seems the elite team is not done yet!
Iceland’s pizza-making, puffin-toting Palli was announced as the team’s newest member today!
One of CLYW’s most outstanding players, Palli got 4th at this year’s EYYC, and further solidifies Backspin’s position as a bastion of extraordinary people! Palli’s signature yoyo with CLYW, the Puffin, has become an instant classic and his Alternative Freestyle exhibition from Worlds 2013 was one of the crowd’s favorites.
The 2013 Japan National Yo-yo Contest is over!
YoyoRecreation’s Akitoshi Tokubuchi, who was the first runner-up last year, stepped up his game and is the 2013 Japan National Champion, beating Tatsuya Fujisaka by a hefty five point margin and Hiroyuki Suzuki by over ten points!
In 2A, 2008 world champion Takuma Yamamoto beat Shu Takada and Ryo Yamashita for first place with a smooth freestyle and ended up over twenty points ahead of the second place!
The former world champion battle in 3A ended up with Minato Furuta ahead of Kentaro Kimura for first place, showing he’s ready to take back the world title later this year.
Rei Iwakura took the title in 4A ahead of Naoto Okada in another contest between world champions.
Finally, in 5A, the newer generation dominated the top placings with Takeshi Matsuura convincingly beating Sora Ishikawa and the world’s cutest player, Yoshihiro Abe, for first place.
Check the full results below:
Thanks to C3yoyodesign and mrmatio for the freestyle videos!