About János Karancz
János Karancz is a Hungarian professional yo-yo player and the first European to win the 1A division at the World Yo-Yo Contest, a title he earned in Orlando, Florida in 2013. He began playing in 2005 after classmates at his primary school introduced him to yo-yos, starting with a Duncan Throw Monkey. Based in Budapest, he works professionally as a landscape architect while maintaining an active presence in the global yo-yo community through competition, coaching, and running his own shop.
Rather than building a routine from established tricks, Karancz spent roughly six or seven years developing an entirely original technical vocabulary, particularly in the areas of slack, whip, laceration, rejection, and tension tricks. He credits Japanese player Takahiro Iizuka as his primary inspiration, having discovered Iizuka’s videos around 2009. By 2011–2012 he recognized that the concepts he was exploring diverged sharply from what other competitors were doing, and he committed to performing exclusively his own material in competition — a strategy that paid off with back-to-back titles at the 2013 European Championship (won by more than 23 points) and the 2013 World Championship.
Karancz has been a member of Team Duncan since at least 2013, and the Grasshopper line bears his name across four iterations: the original monometal Grasshopper (2016, the product of 18 months of prototyping), the Grasshopper X (bimetal inner rim), the Grasshopper GTX (bimetal outer rim), and the Grasshopper GTX 2.0 (refined after two additional years of development). A limited-edition championship Barracuda colorway — engraved and limited to 100 units — was released at WYYC 2013 following his win. Alongside Duncan, he is affiliated with the Backspin team in Hungary, through which he teaches and supports the next generation of Hungarian players.
In Their Own Words
From a September 2013 Q&A with YoYoNews following his WYYC win:
Q: How did you get into yo-yoing?
“In 2005 my yearmates in school started to play with yo-yo and I found it very interesting, so I joined them.”
Q: Who are your biggest influences?
“When I first saw [Takahiro Iizuka’s] videos in 2009, I couldn’t believe his tricks were possible. He showed me that anything is possible.”
Q: How do you approach developing your own style?
“I try to focus on my own ideas, but I get inspired by other players of course. But I focus on using only my tricks/elements on stage and in videos.”
Q: What was your goal at Worlds?
“My main goal was to do a freestyle that the audience would enjoy and I would be proud of.”