+1 cash prices would suck kinda much I guess
I love unicycling comps because it has such a nice feeling, everybody tries there best, but thats all… at euc most of the people drink beer till 3pm go to sleep for some hours and start with the comp xD
if you at cash prices people would be much more focussed on the comp and less on havinbg fun…
than the registration fee would get higher with sucks for ‘not really good’ rider who just go for fun…
one think I would love to see more is a cup for the best 3 or something!!
and/or some free uni stuf for the winners, sponsored by the sponsors
The reason that registration prices are “so high” for events like NAUCC and UNICON is that you are paying for 8 or 10 days of competitions. While I understand that most of the STF riders only want to compete in a few of those competitions, the organizers are creating the event for all of the competitors. Also, medals are one of the main costs for the event, and let me tell you, they are EXPENSIVE. I understand the criticism but without totally reorganizing how NAUCC is set up, the price is not going to change much. (Also, would you pay $10 a day to go to an awesome unicycling convention/competition? I think so…)
I dig your thoughts Chris. I would go to this. It would be nice to have more competitions focused on the street and flat aspect of unicycling. I also like the idea of prizes, that way you are competing for more than just saying you are the best person at the competition… I think if you are competing you are competative and angry about losing anyway or you had fun and did your best… that kind of spirit is there with or without prizes. People that want to can still stay up til 3 and drink, and people that want to can get a good nights sleep and do their best.
But keep up the good work Chris, awesome to hear what you are out there doing.
Personally, I was a bit annoyed that I paid $100 to spend about 2 hours competing in street and flat… And then for the other 9 days and 22 hours there was no where provided to ride street and flat. So we all ended up wandering around Madison for 10 days getting kicked out of spots by the police. Which I could do, at home, for free.
Hey Chris,
I like your enthusiasm but I think you are being a little naive when thinking you can conduct a comp with no rego fee and cash prizes. What happens when some kid gives himself a nasty compound fracture and takes you to the cleaners because you don’t have 3rd party liability insurance?
I’m no street rider but I have been having the same thoughts as to Muni specific events in the future. I guess all I can say is start small. Don’t expect your first event to be a huge, massive, fantastic success with heaps of international riders. Build a good rep for your event, make it annual or bi-anual and then they will come.
I think it’s sick you are doing this, and trying to push it to the next level.
Sure there will be some disagreements and arguments but there usually are.
About the prizes and cash prize. I can see where everyone is coming on this. But i think it could be good for the sports progression. And for the amount of time the worlds best riders put into there riding, they deserve it. I love unicycling just for the sake of unicycling just as much as the next guy, but i think if there is a cash prize that will give riders something to work for, it could potentially push the sport. I’m hoping it will push it in a good direction though haha but i can’t really see unicyclists being very greedy. Pretty much all unicyclists are pretty chill.
Sorry might have confused some, I ment I could put on a competition like EUC etc with no reg fee and have the prizes that they have atm, not cash prizes. And there will always be registration, whether it costs or not, everyone would register to ensure no taking to the cleaners business.
And for sure start small, I’m starting small right now :D… this is going to happen. Its only a matter of time now.
I’m not saying that the costs for Unicon and NAUCC aren’t justifiable… We understand how much it costs to make medals and hire out big halls for freestyle etc. I’m just saying, theres gotta be a way around it, an event we can go to, where we’ll do exactly what we wanna do, receive exactly what we want to receive and pay a fair price.
Let me shortly present the time schedule of a 12 day long Extreme Unicycling Event. Unicon16 from 20-31st July 2012
Opening
Trials Qualification in Ice Hall
-25. Trials Parcours free to use.
Best Trick
-25. Practice on your Street-Obstacles in Ice Hall
Trials Finale on Main Square
Flat Comp
Half Time Party
Speedtrials
Chill on top of the Mountains
Fight Night
Street Comp on Main Square
Highjump, Longjump
World sexiest Unicyclist
Finals Highjump Longjump
Final Party
but there is even more!
All Unicon16 long just for you:
Brixen Skatpark Club Maxx directly on Unicon16 Area
Workshops like “Spot of the Day” to show you the best Street and Trials spots around town.
Workshops to learn more and better skills
Lots of other Unicycling Events to inspire you.
And hopefully many of your Ideas you send to us.
More competitions, or get-togethers of any kind, are a good thing. Unicycling is a long way from having too many competition events. It is natural for the various branches of the sport to break out into focused events. Though mine is mostly not a competitive event, I did this for MUni starting in 1996. By focusing on one area of unicycling you can do a smaller, more intense, and more easily accessible event than the giant competitions.
It’s good to ask, but in the end remember that it’s your event. The organizer owns it, and everyone else gets to decide if they want to go or not. I encourage organizers to try new things, at least one or two, but otherwise do the events your attendees want or like. Or what you want. In the end it’s up to you.
Usually this is determined by where the “workers” are located. It’s very hard to organize an event far from where you live. If you have the luxury of moving around, try to spread it to where the unicycling population centers are. Never feel guilty about hosting it near yourself; other people can host events near them.
That’s kind of a loaded question. Many riders want things to be as cheap/free as possible, so will be reluctant to add more. Better for you to just pick what that amount will be, and do the prices as possible based on that amount and your event budget (and sponsors, etc.).
It’s nice when you have sponsors, or government funds available to help with such things. This was likely the case for those Canadian events. That was the case at the Festival International de Cyclisme in Hull, Quebec in 1988. They had cash prizes for a few races and the basketball tournament, as well as funds to pay some of the unicycle performers. First time I won a cash prize for a unicycle race!
The second time was also in Canada, for 10th place with my team, in Ride The Lobster. IMHO, I would much rather have a unique token of a reward, such as a medal, than the $100 CDN cash prize we won. That became about 1.5 tanks of gas for our team car, and then it was gone.
A bargain, any way you look at it, for an event of that size. One of the problems with NAUCC is the HUGE amount of medals, which cost a lot! If you race track, it’s hard not to win several. The vast majority of those medals are for age group heats in 24" racing, and have much less meaning than the same medal for winning a 42 km marathon, for instance. But even if NAUCC cut the award budget in half, registration would probably only be a little less, due to all the other expenses. In our country it’s hard to get free facilities, government funds, etc.
Also in regard to medals: they seem to work pretty well for the Olympics. In the Olympics you don’t compete for the piece of metal you hang around your neck, you compete to win the title. Same for all titles that are worth winning. Then if there’s a unique trinket of some kind to go with that, be it a unique medal, trophy or piece of art, it gives you a nice memento as well.
I have no experience of this being true, and think it may just be an opinion of yours. Some riders are always going to be pissy and be a pain, no matter what. Cash prizes don’t make non-winning riders any more worthy of winning, and riders are going to take things as seriously as they are about the sport, not about the prize. Top prizes are only in reach of a small handful of riders (unless you do tons of divisions like USA), so they shouldn’t have much effect on the rest of the riders.
That’s the best thing about the big conventions. While a few people here have said they paid the (not really) large registration fee for only a few hours of riding, that isn’t really true. Unless they actually weren’t at the venues, they also got to watch all sorts of amazing riding, shop whatever vendors were there, attend workshops, etc. Huge value for the money. And the big competitions are great for crossover. “New” events, such as Trials (1999), Street (2003) and Flat (?) were introduced at conventions for other forms of unicycling. Though this can happen at a smaller event (Street was first done at a MUni Weekend), they may be more likely to happen at the big, multi-discipline conventions.
To each his or her own. Some would, some wouldn’t. It’s up to them.
Except if you were getting kicked out of places at home, you wouldn’t be with all those people. Don’t forget all the less-obvious benefits of the big conventions. It’s too bad they didn’t have places for the Street & Trials riders to practice for more time though. As an organizer I can understand various reasons why this might not be possible, but it’s unfortunate. Flat riders though–really? I’m sure they could find a spot…
Costs can vary widely from country to country. Liability insurance, for example, is very important in many countries, but not a big deal in many others. Also, in places like Canada or Germany, it’s (relatively?) easy to apply for funds, venues, etc. and possibly host a large event without having to charge the competitors. In the US this is nearly impossible.
Woah. And that’s just the stuff that’s supposed to appeal to STF riders? It’s going to be an awesome Unicon!
BTW, that brings up another point about registration costs on the big conventions. They are usually tiny compared with the cost of getting there. If you can afford to get there, it usually has little to do with the cost of registration. But make your own choices…
I dunno. I think you would have gotten bored with whatever they set up anyway. I can’t imagine all those street riders being satisfied with one spot for 10 days. Wandering around Madison was probably inevitable.
Street riding at an event in inevitable haha. Hopefully at unicon tho theres atleast a small permanent set up for us.
Unicon 16 sounds like its gonna be pretty awesome for us(even if its not from the organizers side of things I doubt I’m gonna be complaning, its unicon!). But of course we’re never ever satisfied :P.
I don’t really want to run an international competition in my small town xD I would either go to Australia to host it or somewhere in Auckland.
A town with multiple skateparks would be perfect, no one skatepark has enough to satisfy every street riders diverse style, if there is a town with lets say 3 different skateparks, instead of doing 3 different zones, we could have 3 different skateparks … 3 different skateparks over the course of 3 days… this is what I want to run. Best of three, bring it on.
The problem for me is that the only people that will organize such awesome competitions, is people that are passionate about this style of the sport… and those people would want to compete… but I would also want the organizing to go well… I am very passionate when I organize events, I try my hardest to make sure that the competitors have things the exact way they want it, MC’ing etc anything… but I can’t do all that aaaaaaaaaand compete
BUT these competitions are never going to be held unless someone steps up and takes the sacrifice of organizing a competition and possibly not competing, I’ll be willing to step up to this mark, this is how I know this competition is going to be amazing.
Yesss this thread got bumped again I love the idea of different skateparks, that could be so sick.
Yeah I agree, but having even just a small area is helpful especially for just meeting up each day. As it was there were usually several different groups wandering around separately cause it was kinda hard to coordinate.
Auckland has this, public transport relatively cheap with buses being able to take everyone to where they would need to be. This could be the go :D. Wouldn’t need to hire out expensive halls and make people pay for damaging public spaces… would have to be in the middle of a dry summer though to ensure no rain.
I would attend to i’m very bad a street but kaikohe was amazing so if it were to be held somewhere near by and was like regionals i would defiantly try to come.
