A friend of mine was telling me about the Stillstand competition at Unicon16 and mentioned the block that the competitors balance on. The this post) but couldn’t find anything specific to what I’m looking for. Thanks in advance!
From what I understand, there are still no official rules about stillstand competition included in the IUF Rulebook, which means that it is up to the organizer of the event to decide first if they want to hold a stillstand competition, and also what would be the rules used.
For instance, at Unicon 16, they determined that you would have to balance on a 15x9cm wood board (same thing as the block your friend was referring to), and that your time would start as soon as you would let go of two “handles” at the height of the elbow (parallel to your wheel). It could have been different dimensions of board, or even a complete different system (and from what I have heard, it would probably have been more simple and better for the riders with another system, the board being quite small for a trials tire and the bars limiting arm movements).
This is a topic that is going to be discussed in the Rulebook committee, to atleast have some guidelines of how a stillstand competition should be held and to determine if we should have it as an official IUF discipline/competition.
If you would like to get involved, this year is your chance as the committee is now open to the public. You can either decide to be a discussion-only member, or a discussion+voting member here : http://rulebook.unicycling.org/users/sign_up (but make sure you read what it implies here : http://rulebook.unicycling.org/welcome/help)
Hugo
It looks like from the results that almost everyone was disqualified. What happened? Was there a minimum amount of time you had to stay up before it counted?
Thanks for the info. I think I’ll just get a 6" length of 2x4 and call it a day.
I like Derek’s videos.
Here’s a picture from the Stillstand finals, which were held in the main gym. You will see there’s also a video clip there. The timer was projected onto a nearby screen, allowing anybody nearby to watch the clock as it ticked upward for each competitor.
There’s not much you can do to make a stillstand competition interesting to watch (other than having everyone go at once), and this setup was also super-complicated. But it did provide a very consistent environment, and precise electronic timing.
IMHO, the setup used at Unicon was more complicated than what I think should be required. Hosts can always “upgrade” to fully electronic systems like the one here.
Yes, any attempt under 20 seconds wouldn’t count, and if you stepped off of the block, the attempt wouldn’t count either.
I think this picture speaks for itself when John says it is not so interesting to watch. 
Great pictures by the way John !
As you mentionnned, having everyone going at once (or atleast in waves) would be a good idea to make it entertaining for the public. We usually do that in our demos. The problem is to find a way to make it official and precise. Could be done atleast for the finals, where people’s times tend to be more spread out, making it easier to judge. Yeah! I found my first proposal for the rulebook.
I went to Home Depot and cut 6 inches off a .75" x 3.5" board. I consider it a good omen that it was maple.
Hmmm, I don’t know about anyone else, but if I would be to still stand right there, I would probably hit my arms on the tables, just sayin’…
Spam bump!