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Reykjavik will host the 2017 World Yo-yo Contest!

November 15, 2015 By Rafael Matsunaga

tzoo.blog_.northern_lights_reykjavik.031815-1024x512

The International Yo-yo Federation has just announced that the 2017 World Yo-yo Contest will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland! The decision closes the 2017 (Europe) candidacy cycle.

Here’s the full announcement:

The International Yo-yo Federation is pleased to announce that Reykjavik, Iceland, has been elected as the host city for the 2017 World Yo-Yo Contest!

Featuring some of the most experienced and well-known yo-yo contest organizers from Europe and the USA, the team behind the 2017 World Yo-Yo Contest is ready to deliver an event focused on players, where contestants from around the globe will be able focus on competing in the best possible conditions.

The IYYF congratulates the Icelandic team, and is looking forward to a fantastic event! Further details about the event and Reykjavik itself will be available in the coming days.

We would also like to express our gratitude towards team Poland, for stepping up to the challenge and presenting themselves as candidates to run the most important event for the worldwide yo-yo community.

We’ll surely hear more about the contest in the coming days, so keep your eyes open for more information soon!

The 2018 (Asia), and 2019 (Americas) cycles are also ongoing, with candidate application deadlines for the former scheduled for December 1st, 2015 and August 1st, 2016.

Filed Under: Contests Tagged With: 2017, featured, iceland, iyyf, reykjavik, world yo-yo contest, wyyc

Schedule and application dates for WYYC host candidate countries

September 13, 2015 By Rafael Matsunaga

The World Yo-yo Contest is coming back to the Americas in 2016, closing the first tour of the contest around the globe since the formation of the International Yo-yo Federation and the introduction of the round robin system.

The system will remain in place for the next contests, and the IYYF has announced the schedules for choosing future World Yo-yo Contest host countries.

Starting with the 2017 World Yo-yo Contest, these will be the general guidelines:

  • 3 years prior to the contest: all applicant countries/organizers must send in their application
  • 2.5 years prior to the contest: organizing country/entity is chosen by the IYYF
  • 2 years prior to the contest: country is officially announced
  • 1 year prior to the contest: venue is announced

2017 – Europe

The schedule for 2017 is slightly late, of course, but candidate European countries can still send in their application according to the following schedule:

  • October 15th, 2015 – deadline for application submission
  • November 1st, 2015 – IYYF makes a decision
  • November 15th, 2015 – host country for 2017 is announced

2018 – Asia

2018 is also slightly late, but very close to the proposed schedule.

  • December 1st, 2015 – deadline for application submission
  • February 1st, 2016 – IYYF makes a decision
  • August 1st, 2016 – host country for 2018 is announced

2019 – Americas

  • August 1st, 2016 – deadline for application submission

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: iyyf, world yo-yo contest, wyyc

2015 World Yo-yo Contest Day 1 (wildcard) results

August 13, 2015 By Rafael Matsunaga

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!

1A

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:

  1. Toya Kobayashi (Japan)
  2. Benson Fok (Hong Kong)
  3. Izuru Hasumi (Japan)
  4. Andrew Bergen (United States)
  5. Yuki Nishisako (Japan)
  6. Yuya Yatani (Japan)
  7. Colin Beckford (United States)
  8. Ryota Komatsu (Japan)
  9. Shinya Kido (Japan)
  10. Hiroaki Yoshii (Japan)
  11. Eric Tran-Ton (United States)
  12. Tatsuaki Okamoto (Japan)
  13. Koyo Hashimoto (Japan)
  14. Clint Armstrong (United States)
  15. Pisco (China)
  16. Ayumu Harada (Japan)
  17. Kevin Nicholas (United States)
  18. Daiki Tanaka (Japan)
  19. Kazuya Murata (Japan)
  20. Tsukasa Namba (Japan)
  21. Yuki Shigematsu (Japan)
  22. Kento Muraoka (Japan)
  23. Kaito Tanaka (Japan)
  24. Amane Okubo (Japan)
  25. Weichuan Wang (China)
  26. Ginji Miura (Japan)
  27. Takumi Sakamoto (Japan)
  28. Ryosuke Hara (Japan)
  29. Shinji Toyoda (Japan)
  30. Kenta Kushiro (Japan)
  31. Tomoki Toyama (Japan)
  32. Lucas Gremler (United States)
  33. Ryo Igarashi (Japan)

Full results for 1A can be found here.

2A

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.

  1. Ginji Miura (Japan)
  2. Koichiro Ueta (Japan)
  3. Yutaro Kasuya (Japan)
  4. Reo Takamatsu (Japan)
  5. Yuki Takami (Japan)
  6. Shinnosuke Ishizaka (Japan)
  7. Hajime Sakauchi (Japan)
  8. Yamato Fujiwara (Japan)
  9. Masaki Iida (Japan)
  10. Shuji Kotani (Japan)
  11. Yuki Yamaguchi (Japan)

3A

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!

  1. Yuto Yamaguchi (Japan)
  2. Takumi Yasumoto (Japan)
  3. Shoto Yamamoto (Japan)
  4. Sora Tahira (Japan)
  5. Ayoun Kuo (Taiwan)
  6. Takayuki Namba (Japan)

4A

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.

  1. Yuki Nishisako (Japan)
  2. Shuji Kinoshita (Japan)
  3. Ben Conde (United States)
  4. Bryan Figueroa (United States)
  5. Sota Maeda (Japan)
  6. Naoto Okada (Japan)
  7. Keita Kido (Japan)
  8. Koyo Hashimoto (Japan)
  9. Renta Motoyama (Japan)
  10. Ryo Oishi (Japan)
  11. Kei Hashimoto (Japan)
  12. Tomohiko Zanka (Japan)
  13. Yohei Kagawa (Japan)

5A

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!

  1. Hiroyasu Ishihara (Japan)
  2. Shingo Terada (Japan)
  3. Shohei Nishio (Japan)
  4. Kazuma Miyakawa (Japan)
  5. Tatsunori Yoshiba (Japan)

The full list for 2A-5A can be found here.

Stay tuned for more updates from the greatest contest ever!

Filed Under: Contests Tagged With: 2015, featured, results, tokyo, wildcard, world yo-yo contest, world yoyo contest, wyyc2015

2015 Worlds Contestants – The Greatest Yo-yo Contest Ever!

August 1, 2015 By Rafael Matsunaga

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!

1A

World Champions competing: 6

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!

2A

World Champions competing: 4

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!

3A

World Champions competing: 3

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.

4A

World Champions competing: 4

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!

5A

World Champions competing: 4

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!

Filed Under: Contests Tagged With: 2015, tokyo, world yo-yo contest, worlds

Pan American International Yo-Yo Contest Announced

February 12, 2014 By Patrick Borgerding

panapamlogocolor

There has been a lot of talk since the restructuring of the World Yo-Yo Contest by the IYYF about the possibility of creating a contest similar in function to the European Yo-Yo Championship and Asia Pacific Championship in America. Due to the number of National Contests that are now being held, which is a great sign about the expansion of the community, continental competitions will now be the only contests to seed to the World competition; however, America previously did not have a contest for Pan-America, thus Gregory Cohen (previous organizer of the World Yo-Yo Contest) and Isaac Kanarek (Chair of Mexican Yo-Yo Association) have teamed with Johnnie DelValle and Bill De Bois Blanc to bring the inaugural Pan American International Yo-Yo Contest (which would make the acronym PAIN–I’m not opposed to calling it this).

The contest will be held at the, apparently, timeless Rosen Plaza in Orlando, Florida, the previous home to the World Yo-Yo Contest from 2000-2013. This is a big step in the yo-yo community as the contest circuit is becoming more complete and well defined; however, the main concern with the World Yo-Yo Contest was that it had run stale at the Rosen, so it will be interesting to see if there are any substantial changes to inject some excitement into the new contest. With Isaac’s involvement, hopefully some positive changes come to fruition for contests held at the Rosen.

Keep an eye out on the website for when registration opens and additional info: Pan American International Yo-Yo Competition.

Here is an official statement from Contest Director Gregory Cohen:

After a lot of work, from a lot of people, the PAI yo-yo contest is now confirmed. It will be one of the three events that seed into the finals at the World Yo-Yo Contest, wich this year will be held in Prague. The contest will seed winners from every national yo-yo contest in North and South America. In addition to the Seeded freestyles that seed into the WYYC, this year we will also have a non-seeded freestyle division the will only be one minute freestyles (We’re open to naming suggestions here.) This is intended for players that are not at the top level to let them compete, and to let them have the exprience of a contest of this size.

We are happy to have the staff that has supported past Orlando events back, and the staff list will grow soon as we finalize staff positions.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Orlando.

-GReg

Director 2014 Pan American Yo-Yo Contest

Filed Under: Contests, General News Tagged With: iyyf, PAI, PAIN, Pan American International Yo-Yo Contest, world yo-yo contest

Goodbye, Orlando

August 23, 2013 By Rafael Matsunaga

I have fond memories of the World YoYo Contest stage at the Rosen Plaza Hotel. I competed there in 1A, 5A, and Combined divisions, I practiced there late at night to hide my tricks from my biggest rival and good friend Makoto Numagami, I faced public humiliation (and fame) at the Wheel of Penalty, I earned my World Title there ten years ago, and I was awarded National Master on that stage.

2013 was the last of fourteen years when the World YoYo Contest was held in Orlando. In many ways, the contest’s history throughout those years has influenced my own, and the development of yoyoing as a sport owes much of its current state to the Orlando era.

My own yoyo career started in 2000, up until that time, the yoyo was no more than a toy for me. That was when I came upon this clip:

The 2000 World YoYo Contest was the first one held in Orlando, thanks to Gregory Cohen’s effort to save the event after a near disastrous 1999 contest in Honolulu — a symbolic end of the late 90’s boom.

That clip video got me instantly hooked. Paul Escolar, Kohta Watanabe, Hidemasa Senba, and the 2004/2013 AP World Champion Tomiyuki Watanabe were all there.

A very important addition was made to the contest structure in 2000: the X division. In 1999, counterweight play was introduced by Steve Brown, Hironori Mii got second place at that year’s World Yo-yo Contest 1A division playing offstring, you can see Doc Pop introducing some Mobius, and Rick Wyatt throwing some 3A in the clip above. The X division, then judged by the contestants themselves, marked the recognition of the new styles as a developing force.

The contest was held at Universal Studios, outside, in the merciless summer Orlando weather. Just walking outside for a couple of minutes in Orlando is a torture, but in 2000, the entire contest was held in the Florida heat, humidity, and rain. Thankfully, that was the first and last time that happened, and the contest found a new home next year: the Rosen Plaza.

From 2001 to 2013, the Rosen Plaza Hotel, in Orlando’s overly-touristic International Drive, was a yoyo haven for three days a year. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by other yoyo players for 72 hours. During the other 362 days of the year, you were the oddball yo-yo player, but during Worlds in Orlando, it felt like the World’s population was composed solely of fellow players.

Having a contest inside also meant perfect conditions for yoyoing, leading to an exponential increase in trick difficulty on the stage. But 2001 also set the precedent for the Artistic Performance division. Yu Kawada, the previous year’s 1A winner stunned the crowd by focusing on the performance aspect of his routine rather than going technical. He would not win 1A in 2001, but his freestyle inspired the creation of the AP division the next year. A division he would win himself in 2006 and 2013.

Note the almost complete lack of sponsors in the background. The scene would not recover so easily from the burst of the previous yoyo bubble.

My own first appearance at the World YoYo Contest was in 2002, competing in 1A, when compulsories were still in place. My first participation would end rather soon, missing Pop ‘n Fresh twice in a row. The judges for that trick were my now editor Steve Brown, and my current colleague at the IYYF board of directors, Hironori Mii. “Try again next year” — were Steve’s words as I climbed down from the little compulsories stage disappointed with my performance.

I would come back the next year, for sure. 2003 was another breakthrough year for the World YoYo Contest and for myself. That was the first year the fruits of the X Division would be reaped. After three successful and very popular showings in the “extreme” division, 3A, 4A, and 5A would finally be recognized as independent divisions, each awarding a new World YoYo Champion.

That would set the general format of the World YoYo Contest to this date. Another big change came in 2007, when compulsory tricks were replaced by one-minute freestyles, both in order to better evaluate the players as freestyle performers and to save the judges from the tedious job of watching the same tricks for hours. As 2013 has shown us, however, the system does not scale too well, and some adjustments are being worked on for the next editions of the contest in order to prevent the day-long preliminaries torture for the judges.

An interesting tidbit that took place in Orlando was the Combined Division. Held from 2006 to 2009, the division’s goal was to find out which player was the most proficient in all divisions. As the results clearly show, Shinji Saito was clearly better than everyone else — in addition to being nearly unbeatable in 2A — taking the award in all four instances of that division. The Combined Division was also the first to offer cash prizes at the World YoYo Contest.

The experiments and improvements made to the contest in Orlando set a solid foundation upon which the World YoYo Contest can build and grow. Worlds is now mature enough to take new steps, and advance further into a bigger and brighter future.

The 2013 edition was in some ways a fitting first step into that future. This was the biggest diversity ever among the top places in all divisions, with Hungary (János Karancz), Singapore (Christopher Chia), Mexico (Luis Enrique), Taiwan (Tuan Chih-Min and Who Theather), and of course Japan and United States all represented among the top three in different divisions, a sign of a healthy, growing, and competitive scene. The perfect scenario for the World YoYo Contest to set sail.

Next year, Worlds will be held in Prague, Czech Republic — the first edition under the management of the newly-formed International YoYo Federation — marking its first departure from the United States since the the first edition of its modern freestyle format in 1992.

Between doubt and excitement, the consensus is that the World YoYo Contest will never be the same. That’s probably right, and that’s also a good thing. The 2013 World YoYo Contest was not the same as the first contest in Orlando, it’s better in all aspects, much was learned, and all the experience from all these years will be carried on to Prague, then to Tokyo in 2015, and all Worlds editions to come.

The Orlando era will always be remembered as the time when we discovered what we wanted in a yoyo contest, when we figure out how to make it happen, and worked to make it happen. And none of it would have happened without the yearly efforts of one man, who turned the contest’s uncertain future into a solid present, and bright future.

Thank you, Greg Cohen.

Thank you, Orlando.

Filed Under: Contests Tagged With: greg cohen, iyyf, orlando, world yo-yo contest, worlds

2013 World Yo-Yo Contest – 2A, 3A, 4A Finals Videos

August 9, 2013 By André Boulay

Videos of the freestyles are quickly arriving online.
http://www.youtube.com/user/YoYoFactoryVideo/videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/DuncanToys/videos


2A World YoYo Champion – 1st Place – Takuma Yamamoto


3A World YoYo Champion – 1st Place – Hank Freeman


4A World YoYo Champion – 1st Place – Michael Nakamura

Filed Under: Contests, Video Tagged With: contest, featured, video, World Yo-Yo Competition, world yo-yo contest

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