WJF 2004 (Final results, TV times, DVD trailer)

[Sean]

The diabolo finals were held this afternoon. The results were as follows:

1. Antonin HARTZ (France), Score: 7.99
2. Ryo YABE (Japan), Score: 6.83
3. Priam PIERRET (France), Score: 6.76
4. Baptiste DURAND (France), Score: 6.52
5. Matt HALL (United States), Score: 4.73

Most of the competitors pulled out harder tricks and better overall performances for the final. Antonin pulled off a nearly flawless routine and was well deserving of the win. The 3 judges were Trash, Norbi, and me. They did a particularly good job I might add.

I'll post more on the criteria that were used for judging later.

Sean

[seán_]

Great to hear it went well.  I'm glad they used qualified judges.
Care to fill in the details.

[Sean]

Sure, Seán, I'll post more about it later. Priam, Trash, and I have been writing this while watching the main event in the second row on my laptop... and after a few beers.

I'll post some pictures as well.

Sean

[seán_]

quick all of you take your shoes and socks of, try and get the whole audience to so it without Jason catching on

Look forward to the pics and the reports. Enjoy yourselves now the pressure is off. Sounds like there was a nice gathering of some of the worlds top diaboloists.

[Arjan]

It`s amazing.. Hey Sean, did Antonin expect it at all? I mean, Ryo maybe would have gone for the clear routine, but he`s with more then 1 full point behind.

[MattF]

Congrats to Antonin. It must have been amazing to judge that competition. I would have loved to have been there.

[Sean]

Antonin had the best diabolo performance I have ever seen. Perhaps the perfomance of his lifetime so far? The only drop was at the very end of the performance when he dropped 3 diabolos high. The rest of the routine was completely flawless... not even a correction. It included nearly every of Antonin's hard signature moves and a few new ones we'd rarely seen before. It was breathtaking.

Ryo had a very off day (for him). He missed some simple whip catches at the beginning and his confidence was shattered. Everyone agrees that Ryo has the highest level of skill here, especially with 3 diabolos. As I said before, he didn't include his best tricks in his routine. His routine today was uncharacteristically full of errors.

Truthfully, Ryo, Baptiste, Antonin, or Priam could have won if they had a perfect run. Despite different strengths throughout, their total degrees of difficulty were similar. It was great to see each of these competitors rise to the occasion and pull out harder tricks than they used in the prelims. Matt nailed some tricks with huge risk on the first try including his hook stall double release double pirrouette and managed a excalibur genocide. The lack of 3 diabolos hurt Matt's score greatly. There was a large percentage of the score attributed to 3 diabolos low and high.

Sean

[MattF]

did you manage to get any filming done of the competition when you were there Sean?

[Sean]

did you manage to get any filming done of the competition when you were there Sean?

Filming was not allowed during the competition... and I was busy judging, right?

Priam and Trash have some footage from the prelims that I will try and get off them. Someone may post some of that after the WJF has aired on ESPN2. What we really need is Antonin's complete final routine.

Sean

[JoMo]

Does anyone know when and what time espn 2 will be brodcasting the competion.      Thank Jordan

[seán_]

Dates for TV are out now

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tvlistings/schedule?date=20050128&network=02

post on rec.juggling (woo look at my lovely spelling and gremmar)

just the toss juggling for now. I'll try and find the Diabolo.

Jan27th clubs 5.00-5.30 team 6 club 5.30 - 6.00 club 7+ 6.00 - 6.30
Jan 28th balls 5.30-5.30 rings 5.30-6.00 (ET)

Cant find the diabolo. too disheartened to look further since I cant get ESPN2 (or 1 for that matter) I leave it up to someone else but theres a start for you.

[JoMo]

Thanks Sean. I had the same problem. If i find the dates i'll post them.  Thank Jordan

[Matt]

Hey everyone!

Don't freak about the lack of a diabolo listing yet.  From what I recall, Jason mentioned that the 6 club and 7 club teams competitions would not fill the entire 30 minutes of TV air time (or 22 minutes or 19 minutes or whatever it is with commercials), so the remainder of that time would go to diabolos/boxes.  Basically, the balls/clubs/rings will be full, but the remaining two shows out of the five should have something in it.  If not, I'll be very surprised and very bummed.

I think they listed it as teams clubs passing because that's the primary show and because it would be easier to understand for the non-juggler.  

I've got ESPN2 and I'm taping EVERYTHING.  

Matt

[norbi]

...and I'm taping EVERYTHING.  

and then sending it all to me on DVD ?

[Jussi]

Did anyone try to do something with 4 diabolos? Or was that forbitten?

[norbi]

it was allowed (and worth quite a lot) but no-one tried it. Ryo had the best chance, but he wouldnt risk something like that in a routine....yet

[Chiok]

Hey there,
I've heard lots about the WJF competition, especially the diabolo section from here, but what I'd like to know is how you (Sean, Norbi and Trash)were approached to become judges for the WJF competition.

This to me seems like such a great honour, especially as they had some top class people judging the world class juggling sections (such as Ben Jennings).  I must say, the skills you guys possess are amazing and very fitting to judge a high caliber event.

Did Jason Garfield ask for you, or send some assistant to find someone?  Also why they asked Norbi who's UK based, and Trash who's France based (did they pay to fly you guys over?).  And did you decide among the rules between you or did someone else do that?  I'd be interested to see how points were awarded for different tricks and routines.

Just wanna say, stella job all of you for putting on an awesome competition show and having judged it so well (I would have thought Priam or Ryo would have won, though all competitors are top notch).

Chiok

[norbi]

Well Trash and I weren't asked to judge before hand, infact we were both competitors. Sean was the only person asked to judge. As there was only 1 judge the preliminaries, all of the competitors just decided between us which 5 should go through to the final. As for the final, we needed it to do be done much more professionally, so me and Trash were chosen (as we both went out in the pre-lims (as did Eric, but they didnt wanted a more international judging table perhaps)) to judge the final along side Sean. I have no idea how we were picked, it was probably decided by Matt Hall as he wrote the first edition of the rules, maybe Sean can shed more light on this.

As for the scoring system, we had a basic idea that was created by Matt, but had a few minor flaws, so with intitial changes made by me and my brilliant maths    we had a good starting point. The 3 of us then spent a good amount of time in Trash's room polishing the rules and point awarding criteria. When we had finished we tested it out, and practiced using it, by watching the footage of the pre-lims and seeing how easily we could use our system to score the routines. In practice we were fairly slow and definately needed to speed things up a bit for the finals. So Sean wrote out a spreadsheet that did the calculations for us, so all we needed to do was score each competitor on our chosen areas, and feed the data into the table. I wont go into detail about that, as Sean has all the info and it would be much easier for him to post everything, but the finals came and something special happened, we were on form, the routine would finish and within probably 10-15 seconds we were ready with a score to announce. It all ran so smoothly, luckily, and i am really glad that i was part of it, it would be an honour if i could do it again next year.

Hope that helps with some things, i'm sure Sean has a copy of the judging criteria, and the rest of the info about scoring (i forgot to pick up a copy which i am annoyed about) so i hope he can finish my ramblings with something worth reading.

[Chiok]

Must say, that's still pretty damn cool how it all worked out.  That's gotta be such an awesome high to be as old as you are and to be a world class judge for the up and coming juggling skill of diabolo.  I would have been so humble to have to critique the styles of the MFP or Hall or anyone.  Definately something that puts a shine on a CV "International Competition Judge".

It's also good to know that the UK still has some good showstoppers coming out of it after the likes of Ben Jennings, Luke Burrage and Toby Walker (although he's welsh...)

Chiok

[norbi]

All those that havnt read/heard (and live in America/Canada/other smaller places that get ESPN2/not UK ) tonights WJF show has been postponed becuase of tennis, goto http://www.thewjf.com and read all about it, and check the updates (couple nice trailers n stuff)