What Have We Won?: The European Yo-yo Championships

There are many sports not given the coverage they deserve—oh, so we only care about curling once every four years? Bullshit. That said, the lack of focus on yo-yoing is probably the most egregious. Action packed, intensely difficult, involving a beloved childhood toy—what’s not to live for?

This ignorance is especially scandalous for Icelanders, as they have one of the best in the world calmly walking the dog in their own backyard. His name? Páll Valdimar Guðmundsson. His wins? Too many to count.

Do it double handed

Palli has been a stable in the yo-yo community since he first picked one up nearly thirteen years ago, even now having his own signature model, fittingly called ‘Puffin’, which you can buy online at Yoyo Expert.

While he excels and competes in many different facets of yo-yo life, his most victorious smitings are in the double handed division, where you do tricks with two yo-yos at the same time. In the European Yo-yo Championships, he has won second in this division in 2015, 2017, and 2018, and third in 2016.

The show was comparable to when Michael Jackson did the moonwalk for the first time.

But Palli’s most notorious yo-yo supremacy occurred at the 2012 44Clash Contest, where he won first place in the Battle Tournament. In front of a live audience of yo-yo fanatics, our maverick debuted a never-before-seen yo-yo trick element called the Grind Winder. The trick revolves around doing yo-yo grinds while the yo-yo makes a sidewinder. In layman’s terms, the string does a weird sprial-y thing.

The show was comparable to when Michael Jackson did the moonwalk for the first time. The crowd went crazy. Páll secured eternal glory, and the trick has since become a stable in modern yo-yoing.

I, Grapevine

That said, the Grapevine did our research and aggressively disputes his second place win in 2018. The first place winner was actually not a European citizen but just some Japanese guy studying abroad in Hungary. What?!

The Grapevine does not stand for this type of riggery and Takuma Inoue should take care to see that no masked man runs up and cuts his strings next year. We don’t joke about yo-yoing.