How many unicyclist are there in the world?

You are lucky, you have quite high probabilities of wining. I have to wait until 2100, it will be long.

When the technique is good, you don’t need amazing health to ride unicycle. Then again to still be active when ur 95-100, you have to be in amazing health.

I will have to wait until 2075. Hopefully you can be patient enough to see me ride at 100 :smiley: You can be the first to ride at 127 years.

The thing is people in their 90’s have lost significant amounts of muscle and have very brittle bones that don’t recover well after injury. Maybe with HRT things might change for upcoming generations though.

This is what we’ve come up with so far:

  • there are more than 70 unicyclists in Houston (guaranteed)
  • 0.3 % of the people in Austria can ride a unicycle
  • a lot less in Norway
  • 0,00005 % in Czech Republic (maybe)
  • there may be quite a few unicycle riders off social media
  • there are a lot of riders on Facebook
  • even more in Japan (millions)
  • there should be more group rides
  • we’re working on a definition of the term ‘unicyclist’
  • several forum members wants to ride until they’re over 100 years old
  • elpuebloUNIdo may or may not play the guitar

We’re still not sure how many unicyclists there are in the world, but if you give us a little more time @Thewheeliekid we will figure it out

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Sounds about right to me

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this reminds me of when I forget to take my ADHD meds

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Maybe loss of muscle in older people is due to inactivity and not just age. Inactivity is a major cause of death.

Why bodybuilding at age 93 is a great idea: Charles Eugster at TEDxZurich

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If you live into your 90’s, you probably have been doing everything right. Those of us that eat too much, drink too much and don’t exercise enough are usually dead by then. My great aunt lived into her 100’s and she was sharp as a tack to the end, but her body had become very frail by the time she died. She still had a driver’s license at 101 years old, although she had given up driving in her late 90’s.

Good question. I thought I had this information, from the early Muni Weekend registration forms. But, always a maverick, he didn’t fill in the birth date part. That was just for the little competition events we ran at those, in case they were divided by age.

At a guess, I would think George is now in his 70s or late 60s. Last I heard he was into Trials bikes; this was several years ago. Before that, he had abandoned regular unicycles for Ultimate Wheels on rough terrain. If you think a regular uni is a workout on the dirt, Ultimate takes it to a whole new level!

I’ll have you know, the first world championships of unicycling (“International Unicycling Convention”, later called Unicon) was created and run in the United states, all metric. The Unicycling Society of America soon changed their track races accordingly. :slight_smile: We Americans know metric makes way more sense in nearly all applications. I think the main reason this country hasn’t made the change is we’re stubborn. And lazy.

Back to the “Unicyclist” thing. You mentioned “Active Unicyclist”, which might be a good distinction in the world of deciding who is and isn’t a unicyclist. I don’t know that riding once per year makes you active, but it’s a starting point. To truly be active, I think you should ride at least once every 3 months (quarterly).

Back to the plain “Unicyclist” definition, Gockie suggested an unbroken ride of 100m to qualify. I think that’s a pretty good starting point. 99m makes you a beginner unicyclist; ride that extra 1m and you stop being a beginner, at least in terms of this label.

So then we have to go back to the question of frequency. Maybe if it’s an average of once per year, proving “you’ve still got it” this can work as a basic determination that you’re still a unicyclist. Doesn’t mean you can’t re-qualify, but after a 1-year gap you’re in a gray area until you demonstrate you can do it. How does that sound?

Okay. So, having posted all the previous, I’ll add the major bulk of unicyclists. I don’t know the current estimated number, but when the JUA hosted Unicon 11 back in 2004, they made the claim that there were six million unicyclists in Japan. 99.9% of these unicyclists learned at their elementary/primary schools. This was a result of a probram the JUA started in the early 80s (late 70s?) to make unicycling, and unicycles, available to school children. In 1987 when I was visiting Japan, JUA officials took me to a Tokyo school that had about 50 unicycles, hanging on long racks, in the play yard. At recess, the kids came running out the doors into the field, and many of them immediately grabbed unicycles and started riding around. Others held onto rails, or each other, and worked on figuring it out. It wasn’t a class, or part of a physical education class, just playground equipment. They even had a few small giraffes!

So if we project forward 17 years from 2004, how has that program expanded? It’s probably safe to estimate at least another six million, for a solid 12,000,000. The rest of the world is probably a few more million, depending how you count.

Depending on how you count “unicyclists”, that number could be significantly higher. But it’s definitely in the millions, and Japan definitely leads the way. Except most Japanese kids leave unicycling behind when they finish with primary/elementary school. They carry the skill with them for the rest of their lives, but many Japanese people seem to think of unicycling as “something you do in elementary school”. Which is a little sad, but it’s a lot less sad than most of the rest of the world, who seem to think of unicycling as something beyond their wildest abilities; an unattainable thing they would never even attempt. That’s more sad. :frowning:

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Based on this article in April 1997 George was 56 as that time. That would make him 80 years old now. I could not find if he still rides.

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This is only half true. :grinning:
the article says: „When he is awake at two in the morning, mulling over the physics of wheel diameter and axle size, he is fifty-six. When he is riding, he is seventeen…“
ps: in the meantime I found out that according a trials video of his son kris peck on youtube, he is from February 1940.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2tM4MRpub4

There are three that I know of where my home is (Bass Lake, CA), and a friend of mine comes up to his cabin to ride with us once in a while (4), but you never know when you’d meet someone who rides or used to ride. I moved to Dublin, Ireland recently and I met James Ryan who does mild MUni, and his two friends also MUni! Pleasant surprises all around haha. I love this sport :smile: :uni:

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This thread is making me smile large! I’m 2 months away from turning 65. Bought a 20” trainer on the 17th of February and dedicated an hour a day to learning. Can freemount (figured it was a necessary skill where I live), and can do 2-3 miles on a good run (with several stops (figure just more opportunitiy to practice mounting)). Hilly where I live so been riding up and down some too. Just bought a Nimbus 29 and can’t wait to start riding it. Still getting in riding shape but really enjoying the challenge.

I know there is another fellow in the neighborhood that started recently but I never have seen him riding. A neighbor who came from Cali gave me a few pointers. She rode in her youth. Miles City Montana has a group of elementary kids that do routines at halftimes and parades. There are a couple utube videos of them.

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This topic is inspiring me.
I first learned to Unicyle on my 57th birthday at the end of September 2021.
Started with a 27.5" Nimbus Oracle. Then got a 19" Impact in November. Then a 26" Hatchet in January 2022.
So far i learned to in this order:

  1. Ride while pushing off a fence.
  2. Freemount riding on week 2 of learning to ride
  3. Hop with right foot in back (so right is my dominant foot)…after a month of riding.
  4. Learned to idle up to over 60 idles with right foot on the bottom…this was in December 2021.
  5. Learned to hop with left foot in back (my weak side)…this was in February 2022.
  6. Learned to idle with the weaker left foot at the bottom of the pedal stroke…this is in March 2022. Still a work in progress…up to 50 idles. Working up to until it feels the same as the right foot.

After i get these down good…my next challenge will be to learn how to ride backwards… hopefully i can get this done by my 58th birthday.

I fell in love with the Unicyle!!!
Think it has given me so much enjoyment and fitness. My body feels so much better now…very loose and limber compared to before.
And with all the get offs, falls and crashes…i feel it has made me gain so much more body awareness and body control. And my back has never felt better.
It almost feels like the Unicyle is a “Fountain of Youth”!!!:rofl:

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If you can idle it should a small step to riding backwards. When idling your riding backwards half the time. Just idle and take a full rotation back every so often and build on it. I learned to idle at 72 and worked some on backing. I have not spend a lot of time on backing because as road/distance rider it is not that useful to me.

Thanks for this advice. I’ll start to learn backwards in April. Got to get my idling down with both feet first.
I like to get certain things down before i move onto learning new things

That has not been my experience at all. I learned how to idle in a few weeks and can even idle one footed, although on the right side only. I can idle on a 36er and on a Hatchet with a 4.8” tire. I’ve been trying to learn to ride backwards for months now and have devoted many hours to it and still do not have it down. Yes, I can ride backwards a little, but not consistently. My control is not good and I typically upd within 20m.

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