And as the sport evolves, it will probably need an update in the next few years. Freewheel unicycling is emerging…
@Klaas_Bil, my comment was not intended to make you change the diagram. Your solution of leading branches from Racing and Distance back together to the road races sounds good!
I have been following discussions on Facebook and here, (privately) agreeing and disagreeing with various comments - Not involving myself as I saw that the general direction it was moving overlapped strongly with what I would have contributed. I think the outcome already looks good and as you have an improved version I am confident, people will be happy! I hope, you are too (you should be 
)!
I just thought, I add my approach observation after I was going to disagree with your approach and then realising that it was as valid as mine :-).
@Gockie, freewheel has been discussed on facebook as not being a discipline in it self but rather a version of each discipline. So the update might not have to be necessary that soon. Who knows, though?
@Gockie, fair point about needing future updates.
The last two sentences of the introduction text (in preparation) are in translation:
“Unicycling continues to evolve and develop. This page was written in 2021.”
Specifically as to freewheel, Felix is right. The absence of freewheel in the diagram is not an oversight.
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I would say that Uphill is a thing in and of itself. It’s not just a competition event, it’s something we often have to do to get to the downhill! Or something that’s part of any “interesting” ride that involves hills. Some people are less interested in riding up, while some like it a lot. I think of it as “earning” the ride down. If Downhill is a discipline, then Uphill should be one as well.
BTW, competition-wise, we had an Uphill competition at the very first Muni Weekend (1996). There was also an uphill endurance event planned, and though a few people were game to do it, by the end of that first day, only a handful of riders had the “endurance” to even go up and look at the trail we had planned to use. So we skipped it; it was a very long day. 
Please, PLEASE don’t call it Distance. Every ride you do has a distance, some long, some short. The Slow Race has a distance (10 meters). “Distance” could mean any, uh, distance. I highly recommend this be called what the bicycling world calls it, at least for racing: Road. Of course you can ride ‘distance’ on dirt, or on a slackline, etc. If it’s not a Stillstand, it’s a distance… 
In your current diagram, Muni has to bend over to the “Distance” category. If that category were called Road (and not all roads are paved), this wouldn’t be necessary. If one does long rides on dirt roads, I would think of that as Road more than Muni. Not that Muni requires mountains, it just requires bumps, really. Each can blur into the others in some ways.
Of course you have Racing as a separate thing, which starts to get messy because we race in various disciplines. If you renamed the green section to Track, that would fix most of that problem. You would then just put Road racing in the “Distance” section (and call it Road). The Muni races are already in their own section, because they are racing in the context of Muni. The Track section can be thought of as racing in the context of a Track environment. Doesn’t have to be an athletics track, but most of those events are intended for one. Then you are only left with the not-so-trackie things like the Slow events and Stillstand, which aren’t really racing like the other events anyway. We used to call those “Field” events, but that used to include High and Long Jumps, which are a better fit in the Urban environment.
As an owner of a hard-tire Big Wheel, I suggest phrasing it that they have air in them so that they bounce.
I do like your simplification of disciplines. But don’t be a buzz kill.
“Artistic Freestyle” isn’t a thing. It was a terminology mistake in older IUF/USA Rulebooks that kept the old word, Artistic, after we started calling it Freestyle. Our current Freestyle event(s) have the “art” built into their definition, so there’s no need for that extra word. By current definition, all Freestyle is artistic, even if it’s not audience-oriented. Granted, not everyone believes Freestyle is the right name for those events, but that’s what we have until it possibly changes in the future.
For Team Sports vs. Games, another possible approach to arranging things is to use Games as the category name, and then split to Formal vs. Informal Games. Formal would be the ones with established, specific rules, like most of the team sports, and informal ones would be the less-structured ones, like Sumo (keeping it informal as long as possible!), Gladiators, Tag and any others people like or make up.
I agree. Most good Muni rides are not purely technical, and not purely easy. Usually it’s a mix. And while you can focus on the technical bits, I don’t know that it needs to be separated out from the general definition of Muni.
I disagree there. If Slow Backwards gets it’s own line, Slackline deserves its own line. Even if only 2 or 3 people do it.
Also got to disagree on Sumo; it’s a popular (informal) event at many large unicycle championships, with a long history. I have resisted formalizing it as a competition event because I believe it is much more fun as it is.
Categorizing these things is difficult because some are specific competition events that are well established, while others are general areas of types of riding people do. I don’t know that there’s a good way to represent everything “equally” without favoring one type of thing over another. It’s an interesting exercise of summing up what unicycling is for people, and of course will continue to grow and change as time goes by.
Sorry, a little more:
I can’t remember what all the events were called, but the Brixen Unicon (XVI) had a whole venue of hillside competition events, some of which were not existing competitions. What a fun day that was! I love when new events are tried, because that’s how our sport can grow and stay interesting.
I never thought of it that way, I guess because I like to mix it up and not ride the same trails all the time. Though when time is limited, it gets limited to the closer ones. But my close trails are still a mix of technical and flowy. When riding for fun, we can choose our terrain within limits, but only if we have access to choices in terrain.
On the topic of Natural Trials, I definitely consider it a thing, but not sure how to list it. To me Natural Trials means doing Trials on things that weren’t arranged or built for the purpose, rather are things that are naturally there. And I will go a little more specific to limit it to naturally occurring obstacles, rather than things you might find in an urban environment, even though those could be considered “natural” in terms of they are things you didn’t build. I think I prefer to leave them out for that reason; if you didn’t build them but they’re man-made, you probably shouldn’t be riding on them…
I can’t remember, but it’s also possible there were Urban events (formal or informal) planned for that day, that kept a lot of those riders away.
It’s true! In Freestyle, you can choose whatever “style” or even discipline, you want to display. However you are limited by the environment (gym floor) and other rules, which tends to water it down to something that looks like ice skating. But not for everyone…
Nope, they are types of riding, though based on the environment suggested by their names. Track being things you do in an athletics track environment, and Road being done in a Road environment. There is a wide range of what a road can be, while Track is pretty specific. Road racing is no closer to “Distance” than is Track because all races are conducted over specific “distances”. Dumb name.
I think that works, for the same reason IUF groups them together. Part of what links them is the equpment; usually similar to what you race on the actual track, or the venue, where you have the right facilities to do those events, either on the actual track or nearby, within the same venue.
They all started as “Track” events, based on the idea of traditional Track and Field. We created High Jump and Long Jump based on the same events done by Track athletes. Of course we do them the hard way, rather than landing on our backs or backsides. As the Urban category developed people pointed out they were less interested in jumping over a fragile bar, than jumping onto something, or over something. This lead to the Jump to Platform and Gap Jump (I forget their real names). While all of those are best suited to Trials unicycles, only the Long Jump requires a lot of speed, so it has a different look. But they are best done together, as it’s generally the same group of people, and same or similar unicycles for all. Note: The Jump to Platform and Gap Jump (Long Jump on Platforms) aren’t in the diagram, though these are significant competition events.
We used to do a Mile (pre-IUF), then 1600m, then 1500m. But with huge numbers of riders, it would take all day just to run one of those. So we changed it to 800m for a better time fit. Longer running races are done on athletics tracks (I think up to 10k), but we don’t have time for that; it’s much more efficient to do longer races on a road. Large paved areas have also been used sometimes. At the first unicycle competition I went to, the 1980 USA Nationals in Kokomo, Indiana, the Mile race was run as a few laps around the high school (which had no track, or none we could use). I came in third and it changed my life.
Do you have any info on why it was changed?
That’s a good question! Unfortunately I can’t remember off the top of my head; we called it Freestyle for a long time, but it was in the “Artistic Unicycling” section of the Rulebook. I looked in my old electronic files to see how far back I could go on IUF Rulebooks, but couldn’t even open the 1994 one I had on there, which was the oldest. Had to use Apple’s Text Edit, which rendered it with some long, vertical sections of text, but readable.
Section 3 of that Rulebook was called Rules for Artistic Unicycling, broken down into the two types, Freestyle and Standard Skill. Freestyle was divided into Individual, Pairs and Group. At that time, Individual and Pairs used the same size riding area as Standard Skill, so they had a few things in common. Later we separated Standard Skill into its own section for better clarity.
But it was years before that, when we started calling the Freestyle events “Freestyle”. Some erroneously continuted to tack on the word “Artistic” in front of Freestyle, but that was no longer the name of the event. However, without digging into basement file cabinets for paper copies, I can’t recall what it was called before that…
At my first unicycle convention, the 1980 USA National Unicycle Meet in Kokomo, Indiana, I think it was called Individual Trick Riding, Couples Trick Riding and probably Club Trick Riding. There was also an Individual Chain Drive (Trick) event. I chose to enter that one, as I was good on my Giraffe. Little did I know it would end up being just me and one other guy in the “adult” group, which was probably 18+ (I was 18). The other guy spent about 2/3 of his 3 minutes trying to freemount. This allowed me to suck pretty bad and still win.
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“Distance riding” is a name that people use. I could have used “Road riding” as well, but as you point out, it blurs other lines. I consider the current diagram (the latest version is not yet published though) final, including the “Distance”-named branch. The accompanying text is almost finalised and also based on the current compartimentalisation (if that is a word).
The current Rulebook (2019) still calls it “Freestyle: Artistic” (and there’s also Freestyle: Standard Skill and Freestyle: X-Style). I would agree that the word “Artistic” is normally not used for this type of Freestyle, but just “Freestyle” does not distinguish between the three recognised sub-disciplines.
Where? I looked up the definitions in the 2019 Rulebook and they don’t contain “art”.
It seems impossible to satisfy everyone, but that indeed makes it an interesting exercise. I for one enjoy it. And surely I acknowledge that this diagram (and the text that goes with it) will need changes sooner or later. Image having done this exercise 20 or even 10 years ago. It would be outdated by now.
Hurray for unicycling being so alive and kicking!
After a good night’s sleep I decided to reconsider this. (Outcome still unsure.)
I had seen John’s post soon after he posted it and quickly decided that I wouldn’t change things, but had no time to respond. After responding yesterday with ‘no changes’ as intended, apparently the cogs in my head started turning (this is sort-of a Dutch expression).
The way I see it, they are in, albeit implicitly. Each of “Long Jump” and “High Jump” consists of two types, i.e. jump over something, and jump onto something. Each of those four disciplines has their own unique name, so e.g. “Long Jump” in itself is not fully specified. In an earlier version of the diagram I had explicitly made those splits, but later deleted them based on some comments (on facebook).
As it is Dutch, a foreigner’s first thought would be that we have clogs that turn in our heads
Even though you wrote it before making that other change, I’d suggest you can consider it final now. Clearly many riders have their own views on the categorisation. Potentially you can make many different charts, but the end goal is to teach new people go get into unicycling what possibilities they have. And existing riders who may want to try out other branches of unicycling. I think you nailed that with what you have.
Will you just post it on the next Stichting Eenwieleren Newsletter (and on the site) or also other platforms? On facebook posts will slowly disappear as time progresses and in 2 months nobody will know about it anymore.
That thought is more painful than funny :-).
Not decided yet, but I recognise that John does have a point.
The main intention is that it will be permanently available on the website of Stichting Eenwieleren. There, the diagram will be in English and the accompanying text in Dutch (with the English terms as well, for reference). It may take a while because we want to link from every name in the diagram to the appropriate location in the text. I know how to do this in html but since many ppl use phones as their main device, we want the site to be responsive to screen size. In that case, creating links from specific locations in a picture is more tricky - we have some leads how to achieve this though.
I also intend to publish the diagram with English text as well, not sure yet where.
NAUCC is a unicycling event name that people use. It’s awful. This has been an ongoing issue with me since the mid-2000s or so (the first NAUCC was the year after the USA’s “national” event was held in Canada). The naming of things is important, as it shapes peoples’ perception of that thing. Also if you are trying to promote the thing, you want it to create a positive perception, as well as be meaningful on its own, so it gives an idea of what it means. In the bicycling world, when people speak of Road, everybody immediately knows what that means. Calling it Road in your Overview diagram can still work, it just requires some shifts of other things.
The story of NAUCC (skip this part if you’re not interested):
The Unicycling Society of America, in some ways, started with an event called the National Unicycle Meet (NUM). The first one with that name was held in 1973. The USA Inc. was incorporated in 1974, and NUM was an annual event ever since. The first IUF world championships was based on the NUM model, largely because it was held in the United States, by people familiar with those events. The first IUF event was called “International Unicycling Convention”. A few years later, the USA changed NUM to NUC, now calling it a convention. I think this was in 1995.
After the 2001 NUC was held in Toronto, the 2002 hosts felt the event name should better match the fact that we welcomed riders from all over North America. So they called it North American Unicycling Championships and Convention. Or Convention and Championships. Nobody can remember without looking it up. The name is accurately descriptive, but in all other ways it’s terrible. Nobody can remember what it stands for (it has also been called “Convention and Competition” at least one year). It doesn’t make a good acronym-word, even if it’s sounds better than “numb” or “nuck”). The name of an event that’s intended to promote an activity should be easy to remember. NAUCC usually gets spelled out wrongly by the press, if they even attempt to break down the name.
In 2010, The USA event was held in Berkeley, CA and called U-Games, which I thought was a great name. No, it wasn’t my idea, but I told the hosts they could call their event anything they wanted, which is true. In fact the first unicycle meet I ever went to, 1980 NUM in Kokomo, Indiana, was also called the “Unicycling Olympics”. That name can’t be formally used, as the “Olympics” is a proprietary word. People disliked U-Games because it sounded like X-Games. They didn’t understand that was the idea. If you have a unicycle event called U-Games, people familiar with X-Games would immediately get an idea of what that meant. Instant recognition of the kind of event we wanted people to be interested in. But noooo, nobody seemed to like it, and USA leadership, at least last time I brought it up, still thinks NAUCC is a perfectly fine name. 
(End NAUCC rant section, thanks to both of you who read through it)
Well that’s just the continuation of the mis-naming of things. The part they’re calling “Artistic” is the actual Freestyle events, Individual, Pairs and Group. But we don’t have a name for "doing tricks in on floor (meaning it’s traditionally done indoors). This is because Freestyle has also become a word used for playing around with skills/tricks. Either that category, or the Freestyle events themselves, should have a different name.
Woah, that’s right! The art is implied, but that word never appears. I don’t know that it has to be specified; that could make for an interesting discussion…
Long Jump and High Jump: It’s up to the Trials/Street riders to decide this, but over time I think the Track & Field High and Long jumps may go away in favor of the more “real world” events that have been added more recently. Or they might stick around forever, like the “Slow Balance” events, which can’t be killed even they are impossible to judge objectively…
Indeed you can never satisfy everyone, let alone with a project that attempts to define all the “major” unicycling disciplines. But I support your effort, and am interested in how it makes us re-examine how we think about unicycling as an activity (or sport, or art, etc.). Here I offer my opinions, and try to share the history, as I understand it, of how those opinions developed.
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If the issue is that every ride has a distance, @Klaas could consider calling it long distance without changing the diagram. road would be fine with me but I’d say that is up to you now.
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Indeed, while calling it Long Distance might make some question what qualifies as “long”, it’s definitely clear enough to get the idea. Much better than the M part of Muni, which hangs many people up thinking they need to be on a mountain to do it. They don’t. Just as you don’t have to be on dirt to ride a Mountain Bike.
The more accurate term for that activity was Rough Terrain Unicycling, which was what George Peck called it. Clear and accurate, the only thing missing was the connection to another sport to help people understand what it was. That’s why we call it Muni, beacuse the two-wheeled version is called Mountain Biking. I firmly believe that Muni got, and still gets, more attention from the non-unicycling world (namely the press) because of the M-word.
Why not? I remember somebody of the EVD (Einradverband Deutschland, one of the three(!) unicycling organisations and the only one that is only for unicycling and not also for other cycling) programmed an app to judge it and it was successfully unsed at german championships and local competitions. It uses the gyroscopic sensors of the phone, which is attached to the spokes.
But to be honest, i don’t know, how well it worked.
Some time ago I posted a “family tree” picture of all unicycling disciplines (styles), and we discussed it in this forum thread. Thanks again to all who participated in the discussion, it made the final product much better.
I’m happy to announce now that the English version of the planned web page is finished and available at the website of our Dutch Unicycling Foundation: Unicycling disciplines | Stichting Eenwieleren Nederland
We believe that a recource like this doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. We have created it to show the incredibly wide spectrum of what is possible on unicycles. For unicyclists, it can provide inspiration on what to try next.
In the “family tree” picture, disciplines that are related are closer together. Clicking any discipline name takes you to a description of that discipline, including photo and video examples. Optionally, a slide show of all discipline pictures can be started.
Enjoy!
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