One of these days I’ll learn how to embed the video into the post…
As you can see, he’s an amazing slack wire artist and IMHO, demonstrates one of the hardest unicycle tricks I can think of. Upside down, on a slack wire, with a hand-pedaled small giraffe unicycle!
There have been some other posts on here that talked about unicycling on wires/ropes/straps, some on rims and some on Trials tires. All great feats but almost all right-side up. This is a rare skill indeed! Li Wei has been appearing in the Cirque du Soleil show “Ovo” (which I haven’t seen). I thought this was cool enough to create a thread about it. As some of you know, I almost never create new threads.
I was somewhat intrigued by this but couldn’t access the video, presumably because I’m not in the US, and I didn’t want to set up a VPN service to spoof my location…
So this is a link to a video of Li Wei training for his Ovo Cirque du Soleil performance which should be viewable from everywhere, I don’t know how it compares to the video John linked to but it is pretty impressive:
The unicycle stuff starts about 3:55 but it is worth watching the whole thing.
Thanks DrD for that youtube link, as indeed John’s msn link didn’t work for me either.
Amazing indeed! The display of control is phenomenal!
It reminds me of the Swedish artist REINO, who in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s rode an ultimate wheel on a slackwire using only his hands. See also https://toledo.araks.se/reino_pic.htm
Has anyone ever seen someone riding a giraffe like Li Wei did, but just on flat ground? Or an UW with hands on flat ground, for that matter?
I immediately thought of Reino also. He was famously depicted on a postage stamp, apparently from that 1957 photo taken in Stockholm. I consider this perhaps the hardest unicycle feat ever accomplished. Li Wei’s version is still amazing, but the frame of his uni makes it quite a bit easier on the arms.
I don’t think I have, in person. I remember seeing Sem Abrahams working on a small-wheeled inverted unicycle with shoulder supports, but I don’t know if he ever mastered it. That would still be quite a rare trick. Mel Hall, in the 1940s, apparently was able to freemount his 9’ giraffe and ride it inverted. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that either, but it is supposed to be featured in a movie called Sensations of 1945.
Perhaps on par with Julien Monney fro Switzerland who coasted a unicycle standing on the seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bni-yvg4M_wAlso way hard, but not up there with Reino. First you have to be able to ride an ultimate wheel with your hands, which is probably the hardest part. But then you have to take that, and put it on the slack wire! A total upper and mid-body workout, that I’m sure would make me super-buff if I were to attempt it. Eventually.
It was a small wheel, maybe 16", with shoulder supports instead of a seat. The rider’s weight is borne by the shoulder supports (like Li Wei), but you still have to pedal and balance it while upside-down.
