Like father like son: knuckle hop competition runs in the Worl family

Records are meant to be broken, but some take longer than others.

Rodney Worl broke his own knuckle hop record several times over in the early 1980s before establishing his best distance of 191 feet and 10 inches at the 1988 Arctic Winter Games in Fairbanks, Alaska.

That record stood until recently when Chris Stipdonk of Fort Simpson, N.W.T., set a new record of 200 feet, 8 inches at Arctic Winter Games tryouts in Inuvik.

The new record came as a surprise to Worl: "I've held the record since the early '80s," he said. "In almost 40 years I've never heard of this person."

But the fall of the record did not come as a surprise to his son Kyle Worl of Juneau, Alaska, who had texted his father with the news of the Worl record falling.

"I met Chris [Stipdonk] back in 2016 Arctic Winter Games when he hopped 188 feet," Kyle said. "I knew this was coming he wanted the record."

Kyle said a new record is good for the game.

"The record had been held by my dad from before I was born ...But tosee it broken I think is really good for our games, good for our culture. That's what we're striving for, is people to get stronger."

Evolution of the game

The knuckle hop is a competition where athletes take a push-up position with clenched fists and make short hops along a circuit, using only their fists and their toes, until they can go no further.

It is a formal part of international Arctic sports competition in both the Arctic Winter Games and the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics (WEIO).

But the game has changed a bit since Rodney set his series of records in the 1980s. At the time it was done on a square 150-foot course where athletes would have to navigate a series of hops to make a corner. Now the course is set with angled corners that Rodney says takes a bit of the edge off.

"What I remember is when we would have to take the 90-degree corners we'd had to basically stop and turn in place and that's where you would really tear deep into your knuckles," Rodney said.

But it remains an intensely physical feat.

Kyle, a competitor of about 11 years in other Arctic sports, said he was initially slow to take up the knuckle hop, but he's been training hard for the past eight years.

"When I saw Chris break the record I can understand the amount of discipline, the amount of dedication [and] training that goes into breaking a record like that," he said.

Kyle said he trained daily in the lead up to his last WEIO competition, even doing more than 10,000 pushups in a 60-day challenge.

"It got me one hundred sixty-something [feet] and so it was still short more than 30 feet from the world record.

"It just goes to show how amazing my dad's record [was], and now Chris's record that people can break or approach 200 feet."

Games and life

That kind of selfless support of one competitor for another's accomplishments are a big part of what defines the knuckle hop and other Arctic sports for both Rodney and Kyle.

"The Native sports really teach you about your personal goals," Rodney said. "That's really what it's about. It teaches you in life that if you can do the best that you are you can do that for the rest of your life."

Kyle began playing the Arctic sports in his senior year of high school, but wishes he'd started earlier.

"I would say the Native games have really shaped what my life is today. Today I coach Native Youth Olympics. It really is my career," he said.

"I coach it. I'm an athlete. I coordinate events for my community and I do it all because of how it's positively impacted me and helped me embrace my Native identity and pursue learning my Native language, and that's what I see in my athletes.

"They encourage me to keep these games going."