The World Yo-Yo Contest 2023 took place over the weekend in Osaka, Japan. Hajime Sakauchi won the 2A division with this amazing performance. I would have ended up with two yo-yos bound for the trash, hopelessly tangled, and that would have been after the first few seconds. If this is the winning performance in the 2A, what did the other divisions do? It turns out that the divisions are all different styles of yo-yo performance.
There’s different classifications of yo-yo trick routines. 1A is your standard yo-yo trick. One yo-yo, the string is tied to both finger and yo-yo.
In 2A, you get two yo-yos, one for each hand, independently doing tricks at the same time. 3A is two yo-yos, but the two yo-yos interact. In 4A, the string is attached to the finger, but not to the yo-yo. The player attaches and detaches the yo-yo several times during the routine, and just does amazing things with the string.
Continue reading to see the champions of each division.
Hajime Miura took the stage barefoot and looking disinterested in the final round of the 3A division, in which two yo-yos interact. Then he blew everyone away to take the top prize.
Above is Gun Ju Eom, who won the 4A division. That's the one in which the yo-yo is not attached to the string.
The 1A champion, Mir Kim, is no less impressive than the other divisions by using one yo-yo in the conventional manner. There is nothing conventional about what he did with it. But there was also a 5A division. That's when a yo-yo is not attached to the finger at all, but to a counterweight on the non-yo-yo end. This style is also called Freehand.
The winner in the 5A was Sora Ishikawa with this beautiful routine. A good time was had by all.