Anyone else think this is really easy?
I thought it was supposed to be unbeatable?
Someone who has money should goto japan, and show these guys up.
Seriously.
Well maybe on those unicycles they use, but not by much. I think the bridge held by ropes would be hardest. Definitely one of the 12 and under unicyclists should go on a win some!
that is an old show. this is before trials unicycles really existed. there are some other threads about this but i can’t seem to find them.
I’ve always wondered about the “rules” for this event. I wonder why more people don’t just hop/side-hop in place. Seems like it would be a cake walk if you treated it more hopping trial lines than trying to roll everything? I’m sure there are some rules though… Still it would be fun build some fun course like this at NAUCC or some other event and just go at it…
the show is from around 1999. John Foss knows most of those people.
1999 = before trials existed really = those people were almost groundbreaking…
Yeah. Thing is there are new episodes and such. They change the course. Its still seemes easy. Newer episodes.
the show ended in 2000 i’m pretty sure.
The “new” courses are still older than trials itself pretty much.
edit: may 5th 2002.
they’ve had some fairly well known (you know, good) unicyclists take on the course. Yuichiro Kato (sp?) has done it a half dozen times.
great show, though
Wouldn’t it be interesting to use this sort of format at an actual unicycle trials competition ie. at Unicon, NAUCC etc… Obviously you couldn’t get as elaborate but why not, instead of doing single trials lines at a time, have a course made up of several trials lines linked in succession and the rider would have to complete all the lines at once for time? So the same concept as Like a Pierrot but you could use easy to intermediate trial lines and perhaps one advanced… I think that would be really fun and make for a great spectating event.
Good show. I watch it every night.
Once they had a bike trials comp and I remember all but one of the riders being pretty mediocre.
Still, very entertaining.
In the first clip, the teacher guy (who falls off at the starting line) is wearing a 1996 medal from the All-Japan Unicycle Meet. They don’t say how far in that past it was but I get the feeling it’s not more than 1 or 2 years old, meaning 1997 or 98. The only Trials unicycles that existed at that time were self-built Schwinn conversions with Monty wheels & such. The first Unicycle Trials competition I know of was at the 1998 CA MUni Weekend, but it was only a sketchy, simplified version of Trials:
So the Like a Pierrot courses would not be much of a challenge for today’s riders, even in Japan. Though Trials unicycling still barely exists in Japan, the riders there know what it is. You would have to design much more difficult courses to challenge today’s top riders.
My favorite game I’d like to try on that show is running across the tops of those giant foam dominoes. I’ve never seen anyone make it. Though I TIVO’d many episodes of Unbeatable Banzuke to try to capture all the unicycling, I don’t think I got the one where Handa makes it through the #4 course. I know him from all the way back at Unicon III (1987). In fact I think he was even at Unicon I in 1984. In the picture below, he’s the guy in the middle. Same sweat pants? 
