Tips on sprinting

I couldn’t find a topic on the site about sprinting.
I noticed in this video that nearly all unicyclists stand up when taking off:
Unicycling Race || ViralHog

Any tips that you can give that help me get faster are welcome.

Another thing from these competitions I notice is that they all hold on to a pole. I feel I have better balance when free-mounting, but of course for the sprint, the free-mount costs time, which you don’t have. I need to find a good spot to practice this from.

Apart from the taking off, I still feel the problem of finding the sweet spot of hanging forwards enough to keep the same cadence and pressure without running into balance problems.