There could only be one winner – one yo-yo to rule them all – but this was no ordinary yo-yo competition, with each one dangling from a 65-foot (20-metre) rope, suspended on a crane.
The contest on Wednesday, touted as featuring the world’s longest yo-yos, was conceived as an unusual way to test the physics skills and sheer ingenuity of students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
On a lawn at the centre of the campus, in the northern coastal city, a towering yellow crane was set up, to give each of the 14 teams a chance to try their luck. The oversized playthings were hoisted skyward in a cage, winched up carefully before the cage trapdoors opened and the makeshift yo-yos unfurled their way towards the ground below.
Some yo-yos were spartan affairs, putting substance over style. But others aimed to please the crowd as much as the judges, who were measuring how far each yo-yo would ascend after its initial plunge from the top of the almost 100-foot crane
One entry was painted in yellow-and-black stripes that wiggled psychedelically as the yo-yo span downwards, a built-in mechanism releasing colored confetti into the air, to the delight of the audience below.
Another was painted on each side with a yellow grinning face, a single tooth painted in a wide, red smile that span around as the yo-yo yo-yoed.
At stake for the team with the best showing was 10,000 shekels ($2,935), and, of course, the glory of beating out their schoolmates. In the end, Eyal Moshe Cohen won the day, with his all-steel yo-yo netting him and his teammates the top prize.
