Hey gang, was wondering while watching the Olympics…
If ever a day comes when unicycling becomes an Olympic sports, which style would prevail?
MUni race: 15-30 people UP and DOWN a steep mountain on a 24 KH with Large Marge tire?
OR
Trials with heavy-metal/funk/rave/(insert favorite music here) playing in background with obstacles while displaying various uni skill sets with perfect 10s(like gymnastics) for scoring?
OR
Winter Uni racing around an ice rink with uni tires with spikes!
Ok, that’s sounds bit wacky but then again my neighbors and friends already thinks riding a uni is wacky anyways.
I think freestyle is the best to watch for the audience there are enough races in the olympics, the street and flat riders are just to bad or not consistent for a serious competition right now. To be honest except from a few riders especialy the flat battle at unicon was realy boring. But I hope that unicycling will never become olympic, in my mind the olympics havent much to do with sport it is just bussiness to give a few athlets and many old man who are involved in the IOC money. It would destroy the nice flair from our sport pretty soon. I think the thing that makes unicycling so special is that we have the only sport I know which has competitions on a very high lever together with just hanging out and enjoying the convention part of a unicon or other event.
Lutz: why should unicycling become a worse sport because we got into the olympics. I think it would be a great chance to higher the bar and show that we are a real sport. Anyway I think unicycling might not be ready for it at least within the next 5 years.
If unicycling became a disciplin I think freestyle will deffinately be in it. Also the more spectacular disciplins as trials and muni might be an option as well as road - maybe it might just not be 10k and marathon but some longer distances - it is the olympic games anyways.
Seen as the olympics are growing every time they are held and BMX has become an olympic event I think it is possible for bike trials to get a chance at becoming part of the olympics, bike trials is a growing sport. If this did happen the most likely style of unicycling that could make it into the olympics would be trials although if road unicycling gains momentum and the clown lable is lost that would also have a chance. I think that unicycling is nowhere near big enough to become part of the olympics and I would be surprised if it ever did. Personally I dont see the need for it to be in the olympics, especially because I think there are too many olympic events as it is.
Maybe, but to allow BMX in they got rid of the 1km track cycling event. It was fairly controversial - getting rid of an established event to replace it with something that maybe isn’t seen as quite so serious. Which raises another question - what would unicycling replace?
Either way, It’d have to be cross country muni (I don’t mean easy before anyone says that. I just mean you ride up as well as down), although a big wheeled track event would be ace to watch.
If they are going to add any new sports to the olimpics, all I ask is to keep the corrupt judges out of it. Make sure it has a start and finish line. The one who crosses the finish line first wins. You can’t bribe a photo finish.
To whom? If you still need to be convinced don’t miss Unicon XV, which will be in NZ! If two-man Luge is a real sport, why isn’t unicycling?
There’s something to be said for that. We would probably have to start with objectively-judged events. That’s why we came up with Standard Skill BTW. Currently our judges aren’t corrupt, they just don’t have much experience. We need much better judge training before we’re ready for Olympic Freestyle.
Interesting how everyone insists that their favorite events must be the Olympic ones. I think the event that has the best chance of being accepted first is the one that’s the most interesting to watch. Not by you, but by an Olympic TV audience.
Not that it’ll be on TV anyway unless you’re in a country where your athletes have a chance to win. American Olympic TV coverage favors the events where Americans do well (lots of variety there as we have lots of athletes). UK TV (BBC 1 mostly) showed lots of rowing, sailing, archery and some velodrome racing. Not a lick of basketball or volleyball that I noticed. One night of Danish TV showed some events where Denmark was strong, but again with more variety as Denmark doesn’t have a huge Olympic team.
But the Olympics is business, and most of that business is generated through TV coverage. Our sport has to look good on TV.
To whom? If you still need to be convinced don’t miss Unicon XV, which will be in NZ! If two-man Luge is a real sport, why isn’t unicycling?
There’s something to be said for that. We would probably have to start with objectively-judged events. That’s why we came up with Standard Skill BTW. Currently our judges aren’t corrupt, they just don’t have much experience. We need much better judge training before we’re ready for Olympic Freestyle.
Interesting how everyone insists that their favorite events must be the Olympic ones. I think the event that has the best chance of being accepted first is the one that’s the most interesting to watch. Not by you, but by an Olympic TV audience.
Not that it’ll be on TV anyway unless you’re in a country where your athletes have a chance to win. American Olympic TV coverage favors the events where Americans do well (lots of variety there as we have lots of athletes). UK TV (BBC 1 mostly) showed lots of rowing, sailing, archery, swimming and some velodrome racing. Not a lick of basketball or volleyball that I noticed. One night of Danish TV showed some events where Denmark was strong, but again with more variety as Denmark doesn’t have a huge Olympic team.
But the Olympics is business, and most of that business is generated through TV coverage. Our sport has to look good on TV. To me that rules out track racing (as we currently do it) because it’s too slow. We need to speed it up or otherwise make it more dramatic.
Thats true, Muni races and other sorts of races would be the only ones that could be put in first because of audience knowledge. But I still think the olympics should only be “warrior” sports, like swimming, running, fighting, javelin. Maybe Women’s volleyball also.
The main thing we need to do, if we want unicycling in the Olympics, is have organized unicycling competitions in a sufficient number of countries to make it interesting to the IOC. That’s about 75 countries for men’s summer sports, 40 for women’s summer sports, and 25 for winter sports. Winter sports are easier because much of the world doesn’t have winter.
75 is a big number. It would be interesting to know how many countries were represented at Unicon, and how many of those have real unicycling competitions aside from Unicon.
In terms of TV and spectators in general, now that we have the front flip, street has a chance of looking good to non-unicyclists; I expect that within a few years, flips will basically be required to win street competitions. But still, street competitions exist in only a few countries.
