I was looking through the invitation packet schedule of events, and noticed this:
9:00 - 22:00 Starting 25 Jul The trials parc will be built during the beginning days of the UNICON. After that it will be open for usage to all.
I saw that the street competition is on 27th of July
13:00 - 14:00 Street Freestye Trials Parcour
AND
The trials competition is on 31st of July
17:00 - 21:00 Trials Trials Parcour
So…
I was wondering, isn’t it in the trials rules that u aren’t meant to ride the course before the competition??? Just wondering that’s all, and I thought maybe the same would apply to the street comp…
The trials parc with different obstacles will be built at the beginning of UNICON for everyone interested to play or train there.
The line (or the course), that will be used for the Trials Competition, will be setup shortly before the competition.
Any further more news on whether there will be a XC MUni race?
We felt that the XC race was just as important (if not more so) than having a DH MUni race. To find the best overall MUni rider, you have to be able to ride up as well as down, so if there was only going to be one MUni discipline contested, it should be the XC. Just as XC MTBking is an Olympic Sport, DH MTBking is not.
Ooh Eddie the Eagle: He even made our local TV news (Iwas in Manila at the time). I remember some interviewer asking about his very thick glasses: His reply was that he could either take them off and see very little, or leave them on and have them steam up on the skijump take off ramp. Didn’t he train down a slope built from the roof of his garden shed? A great guy, we need more lunatics like him.
We will be having a meeting of the organizing commitee this Sunday and the above question is one of many on the agenda. Hopefully I will able to come back with a positive answer sometime next week.
About comparing unicycle diciplines, as you do above, is difficult in my opinion, because it is more about what one likes and what not. Be assured that the upcoming UNICON in Switzerland will have more events than any UNICON before:
We will be having the first Street Competition at a UNICON.
There will be three full days of basketball
and three full days of unicycle hockey
We will be having fantastic MUni rides
a downhill MUni race and x-country orienteering
and trials
we have all of the traditional track races
apart from having a 10km we will be conducting a full grown Marathon for the first time during a UNICON
there will be all of the artistic events (individuals, pairs, groups, standard skill)
tons of workshops and much, much more
If you have a look at the schedule of events on the UNICON XIII webpages, you will see 11 UNICON days crammed with unicycle action. Usually program starts as early as 8 o'clock in the morning and finishes at 10pm in the evening.
If you miss this, you will probably be as sorry as I am for not going to Tokyo. But at least I am not going to miss this opportunity
On their website, Unicon is equated to World Championships. But isn’t
it a UNIcycling CONvention combined with world championships? That’s a
significant difference which I thought should be reflected on the
UNICON XIII website. It is more the convention than the championships
that attract me.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“erectile function trumps public image - David Stone, commenting on the importance of seat comfort”
As for Trials, I don’t have time to dig thru the rules to see if it’s actually in there, but usually Trials courses are intended to be ridden “cold.” However at an event like Unicon there is also an impetus to introduce the concept of Trials to new people, and let others work on their skills. So I don’t have a problem with the method the hosts have outlined.
As for Street, I very much recommend that the course be open to competitors beforehand, so they can plan their performances. Though an element of spontenaeity is almost guaranteed in that event (the exact performing layout will probably not be known in advance), too much spontenaeity is not a good thing in a “Freestyle” event. Better for competitors to figure out what moves they can and can’t do, then only perform the good stuff, rather than five unsuccessful tries at everything.
Yes the CON part is supposed to be a convention. What happens is the hosts usually get wrapped up in the ever-growing amount of competition events that people expect and request, leaving them little time to plan the convention part.
This is sad, because if more attention were paid to lining up vendors, workshops and other convention-like things, I’m sure Unicon could attract a bigger crowd. Of course this could seem scary to hosts, who are trying to prepare for everybody entering as many events as possible. I think only some events should be open to all, while others should be just for the top riders in those disciplines. This would make the schedule much easier to manage, and leave lots more time for non-competitive stuff.
Until then, Unicon better fits the description I usually use for people who ask: “It’s the Olympics of unicycling.” (with almost as many events, less politics, and a lot less money!)
please have a close look at our logo that we use on every page of our website and on every paper that we distribute. It’s UNICON XIII & World Championships.
All of the unicyclists know that the UNICON also has the convention part in its name (see also the README at the bottom of the entry page, where we explain this in detail, it’s in german though).
On the other side, we also would like to get sponsoring money. For that we, the organizers of UNICON XIII, have decided to move the competition part a little bit more into the center of attention. In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to do that, but in the real world you need plenty of money to setup an event like that. Ok?
If you inspect the schedule of events, you will notice that we will be having up to daily non-competition rides for both MUni and long-distance unicyclists. We will be having workshops on as many subjects of unicycling as people can think of. We will be having a gym dedicated to training and games only. We also have a central hall, where you can meet others for discussion and whatever. It’s also the place where you can have breakfast and dinner. There will be video’s in the late night. We will be having large dormitories, that way not all the people are distributed in hotels all over Langenthal (although some might prefer that and have the option to do so). So there is a good chance for the conventional part of UNICON. Apart from that we plan to have excursions to the favourite tourist destinations of Switzerland, again this is non-competional.
On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:22:16 -0600, johnfoss wrote:
>I think only some events should be open to all, while others
>should be just for the top riders in those disciplines.
I am considering to enter the 10k race, but I wonder if I would
qualify as I have no previous racing competition experience. The
website refers to the forum for the question “who can participate” but
the forum gives a 404 error. I’ve sent a message about the forum not
working to the organisers.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“erectile function trumps public image - David Stone, commenting on the importance of seat comfort”
>please have a close look at our logo that we use on every page of our
>website and on every paper that we distribute. It’s -UNICON XIII &
>World Championships-.
Franz, let me first say that I appreciate the time you take to monitor
this newsgroup/forum for UNICON related posts, and to respond to them.
This must be busy times for you!
Indeed in a close look, one can see the &. But only in the English
text in the logo, not in the German text. Nor in the header text on
the homepage in any language (admittedly I couldn’t read the Japanese
version).
I wasn’t complaining about the lack of convention-content in the
announced program, but about not mentioning ‘convention’ in the name
of the event.
>All of the unicyclists know that the UNICON also has the convention
>part in its name (see also the README at the bottom of the entry page,
>where we explain this in detail, it’s in german though).
I’m not so sure that every unicyclist knows that CON stands for
convention.
Before I wrote my previous post, I tried clicking on the readme pdf
link multiple times. However, each time it makes my computer crash.
Does anyone else have that? Normally, I can read pdf documents without
a problem, so there may be something wrong or peculiar with that file.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“erectile function trumps public image - David Stone, commenting on the importance of seat comfort”
the UNICON XIII forum has been hacked late in the night on Thursday. The intruders took advantage of a security hole in phpBB and destroied all its content. I am currently looking with my webhoster on how to progress. As an alternative Gilby offered to host a UNICON forum right here on unicyclist.com. This route is quite appealing and I most likely will go along that route. But first I have to see what part of the database content can be restored from the backukp.
The article in the UNICON forum discusses the limitations that were accepted by the IUF rulebook commitee. These affect the number of competitors for the artistic competitions (individuals, pairs and group; although only the expert levels of individuals and pairs).
There are no limitations for entering any of the races. For the race to be enjoyable you should plan to do quite a bit of training beforehand. Riding fast for long distances is strenous. On 24" race unicycles the fastest riders in the world can ride the 10k in just under 30 minutes. Riding it in 45 minutes is easily managable after only a bit of training.
Our webhoster seemed to have had a problem and the UNICON XIII webpages were off the internet for a couple of hours. I try to find out what happened.
Access to the homepage is fine now though.
The webhoster of the UNICON XIII webpages moved house to a much bigger site. As a consequence the UNICON webpages were off the interent from 1 Dezember 10pm to 2 Dezember 7am (all times in MEZ).
So European’s probably won’t have noticed much, because for us it happened during the night.
Last Sunday we had our latest meeting of the organizing committee. We decided to change the requirements for the unicycle orienteering and we added a light version of the Downhill Race without jumps that can be done with normal street unicycles. So we have now in the schedule (which will be published sometime this week on the UNICON XIII webpages):
XC Unicycle Orienteering
XC Downhill (as opposed to Extreme Downhill, which was already on the schedule). Both events will start on the Gurten hill near Bern, but the XC Downhill will follow a field path (not tarred).
We have now closed the schedule of events, and we won't do any more changes to it.
BTW, I just thought that we should be better organizing a bicycle world championship, because biking is an olympic sport and unicycling is not
I know there are some non-competetive rides organised, but is there any point coming if we just want to ride unicycles and don’t want to compete at all, and are more muni than indoor riding types?
Is anyone else considering coming and not messing around with competing?
Due to limited money and time, for me it’s a decision between Unicon and doing a muni trip to the Italian alps, which would probably end up being a lot cheaper, but obviously wouldn’t have such a large number of unicyclists there.
