UNICON XVI: Discussions on events/rules

Hi everyone,

I’m starting this thread nice and early so that everyone on the forums can have a bit of a discussion about the next UNICON in Italy 2012. Everyone wants the event to be memorable and fair- especially those travelling a long way to get there. I think this would be a great place to discuss things that have and have not worked in previous world championships. I’m talking rules, competition layout etc. It would be great to get input from people representing all disciplines. If there is a general consensus about a particular event then we can approach the organisers in plenty of time to make it happen so the riders are happy with the outcome.

So, i’ll start off.

My bias is Muni- it is pretty much the only discipline I ride- and thats what the rest of my post will relate to.

  1. Safety Equipment. In previous events it has been mandatory for riders to not only wear gloves and a helmet but also knee pads. I would like the knee pads struck from the compulsory equipment for events. For those of you that do wear them- good on you. I personally do not ride with leg armour and have not for the last year and a half. Think of wearing pads as a self inflicted safety waiver- if you feel it is compulsory go ahead, if not you are taking responsibility for your own safety outcomes. Helmet and gloves are, i feel, compulsory safety elements. But you don’t see the UCI committee forcing XC of DH mountain bikers to wear leg armour or chest protection at their world championship events.

  2. Inclusion of an Enduro XC muni event. It would be great to have an event that caters to the long distance muni riders out there. Something along the lines of a 30Km race (I’d prefer longer but I guess you’d have to make it inclusive). Or it could be a 3hr race of the regular XC muni course where laps are counted- That would also cut down organisational pressures.

  3. Remember this is a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. Events should cater to riders at the top of the sport. Sure it is also a convention and all riders abilities need to be catered for- but not for the main events! At UNICON XV- there was a fiasco with the DH muni course. A great, technical course was swapped out for a lame one (come on now- the XC race ended up being more technical than it!) because organisers wanted to make it too inclusive.

I guess this means a lot of social rides, and non competitive events should be scheduled so that we cater to all riders and don’t have numpties complaining about how hard the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MUNI courses are. At a World Championships- surely the world champion riders should end up being happy.

  1. Split mass starts. Personally I think they are a good idea AS LONG AS fast riders do not get stuck in the rear groups. At NZ Tony Melton and Jamey Mossengren (two very fast and skilled riders) got stuck in the rear starting group. They had to try and pass tens of slower riders on singletrack- something that surely hindered their race. I know there was a sign up sheet at the beginning of the event- but who puts their name down has no connection to that riders ability. Maybe there should be a submission process where a rider can list their last race/event results (national champs, previous Unicon, MTB race etc) and the Muni organiser can choose who goes in what wave. Sure not every single person will be happy- but it would result in a fairer race for the competitive riders.

That and more outrageous parties and I would be a very happy Muni rider at the next UNICON.

Lets have your ideas folks,

Mark

Hi Napalm,

Just a few things in reply

  1. Knee Pads
    That is something that is discussed at the rulebook committee after each Unicon. I’ve voted or argued against the compulsory use of kneepads at every one I’ve been involved in, but so far the majority of the IUF feels it should be compulsory. This might change as the sport evolves, but organisers don’t make the rules, the IUF does.

  2. I think it is slowly improving. UNICON 12 XC MUni involved a 5min lap around the park, UNICON 13 didn’t have an XC (instead had an 'easy downhill, and an impossibly difficult ‘extreme DH’), UNICON 14 had a short 10min loop (which didn’t count as a race in it’s own right), and UNICON 15 had over an hour of XC MUni.

As an XC rider, I would have loved a 3hr race, but as an organiser, we also needed the thing to work for all the stakeholders. We ran on a tight budget, tight schedule and had hundreds of volunteers and riders. I hope we do get a 3hr race one day (as long as I’m not helping organise it :))

  1. It was a bit more complicated than that, the ‘original’ course was not the original course at all, but one that was shown to riders by mistake, and intersected with the hillclimb event. Either way, you’ll never get a course that satisfies everyone. See my response (2) above.

  2. Seeding riders is always going to be controversial. That happens at mountainbike events (at least when I was racing MTB Nationals), and is even harder for Unicycling. We don’t have a world ranking system.
    This video might be of interest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q81PDUj5wc

The IUF along with local organisers try to improve each event with lessons from previous UNICONs. Remember XC racing, as an endurance event, didn’t really exist until UNICON 15. One of our goals for UNICON 15 was to lift it to something comparable to Mountainbike XC racing. It’s still very new, and has a way to go.

MUni events will always be difficult to organize in a context like UNICON. There will likely be over 1000 riders at UNICON XVI, and a downhill course which will test Martin Charrier and David Weichenberg will be flat-out dangerous for most of the riders who will sign up for it. Should we really run a race for 20 riders out of 1000? Maybe, but it makes the logistics of running the events even more difficult, and MUni logistics are the most difficult of any of the events we run. And none of the other events at UNICON are so limited.

I would certainly participate in an endurance XC race, and maybe the distance would be enough to scare off the casual riders, but unless the race is multiple loops over a short course (which isn’t that interesting), it’s really difficult to run in terms of trail marking and keeping track of where people are.

I ran the MUni events at U Games, and we were fortunate to be allowed to run the events at a park with a fun downhill singletrack. But there were several months where it was not clear we could get permissions to run events anywhere near Berkeley, and the courses had to be determined by the places where we could get permission to run them.

I don’t really mind about the knee/leg armour rules. They don’t bother me.

I really liked the relaxation of the ‘no running or walking for more than 10 metres’ rule at UNICON XV. A great improvement that should be continued in future UNICONs.

About the original DH course - it was in fact the original course which I had planned and it in fact did not intersect with the uphill course - they were merely close - but did not intersect. The uphill course’s finishline was originally some 50m further down the hill, at the top of the steep section, such that the courses would not intersect. The fact that the lower section of the DH course was not actually marked on any map of Mt Vic allowed the organisers to freely interpret the original map I devised of the course and made it extremely lame. I am very proud of the original DH course which I set, and feel that was pitched at the right level for a World Championships level downhill race.

In any thread about competition rules, it helps to explain a few things up front. Perhaps first is the definition of “fair”. For me, the basic definition of fair is that it was run according to the rules that existed prior to the event, and/or those rules were interpreted in such a way to apply all other existing rules accurately. Most definitions that don’t match up with that will tend to only be fair to a certain segment of the audience.

At Unicon, it’s very important to know who that audience is. While we definitely want to cater to the top echelon of riders, for any events only being held in one version (not an easy and hard, for instance), it must be balanced to at least be accessible to a wider range of riders. This is especially important for those riders that traveled a long way to get there, with expectations of participating.

So “fair” means running it the way it was supposed to be run. Even when you don’t like the rules.

The second thing to keep in mind, as Ken mentioned above, is that the IUF’s competition rules are written and edited by the IUF Rulebook Committee, which is separate from the group hosting Unicon. Though we always want people from the upcoming events to be involved, their votes don’t count differently from the other interested volunteers on the committee. We do a long process of submitting proposals, discussing them, editing them and then voting. Then the old Rulebook is updated into the new one.

Generally, hosts cannot create rules that will conflict with the existing ones. However, they can create events or rules that don’t, or that are in addition to the existing rules. So for example, a convention host doesn’t really have control over the kneepad thing. But they can add an Enduro XC event, and make up any rules they want for it (unless we’ve already got existing rules to cover those sorts of races).

  1. Knee protection:
    Think of it this way. That rule, while there to protect riders, is equally there to protect convention hosts. Being as Unicon has its roots in the United States (4 Unicons there, including I and II), it’s a little more liability-centric than many other countries are.

So my basic response on safety gear is that you only need require what you think should be worn when you host your own event. The event belongs to the people/organization hosting it.

  1. Inclusion of an Enduro XC muni event:
    Love the idea. With more experience as an organizer, Ken has pointed out some of the difficulties involved. We also like doing a Marathon road race these days, which is also a large logistical problem, and it would tend to take precedence with limited time and budget. Especially when the MUni venue is not conveniently located. If riders have to take a long bus ride to get there, for instance, it might be necessary to cram all the MUni events into a single day (as at Unicon XIV). I’ve been in a 25-mile MUni race, which was the hardest unicycle event I’ve ever been in. Don’t know if I’d enter a Unicon one, but I like the idea!

  2. Remember this is a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. Events should cater to riders at the top of the sport:
    Remember this is Unicon. That is, a mix of a world championships and convention, in a sport that’s very poor, and trying to grow. So Unicon tries to be many things to many people. In a perfect world, we would have at least two different difficulty levels for the MUni events. We’ve kind of figured this out for Track racing. Where it used to just be age groups against the clock, now we have Finals, where the fastest riders go head-to-head regardless of age.

This would be nice for MUni, but much harder to do, especially in a single day if that’s all we had available. But I like the idea. Everybody races a shorter, easier race, and the finalists get to do the killer race. Not only will it be much harder and possibly longer, it will be much, much more interesting to watch! Not only by unicyclists, but by the general public, TV, etc. I hope that’s where we are headed.

The best-case scenario is where there’s enough time and budget to do all the events we’d like, but for Unicon, that’s getting to be a huge number of events!

  1. Split mass starts:
    Ken gave a good explanation on that one. The video clip he posted shows the fiasco that was the XC race at Unicon XIV. Nobody had a chance of being competitive on that short course if they didn’t start near the front. That’s what he meant by it barely qualifying as a race. That venue (a ski resort) wasn’t well-suited to an XC race, so the concentration was on doing great up- and downhill events.

I love how the “official” version and Tony’s still don’t match up even after all this time. :slight_smile: As it turns out, for the best Downhill, people just had to enter the XC. That made it an excellent XC race, and easily the hardest one ever at a Unicon. The Downhill was still a good, fast course, but not as crazy as what Tony had in mind.

No. Maybe 30. :slight_smile: In other words, that’s how it should be, and we are gradually getting there.

This was also a problem for Unicon XII and XIV, where getting a venue that would allow the events was a relatively last-minute thing. At both of those Unicons it was a 3-hour bus ride to the venue.

I think it worked well also. What we really want is a common-sense approach to that; something that allows people to move through difficult areas without blocking them, but not having any sort of advantage by doing so.

I, for one, am relieved I didn’t have to race on it (I probably would have withdrawn). Though I am no longer a world-class racer, I did travel halfway around the world with my MUni and was very happy I could use it and not be too embarrassed by my performance in the actual race. As I said, the best-case scenario would allow for two (or more) different courses.

In addition, I think my favorite riding photo from New Zealand was taken on the day Tony took us on a tour of the MUni courses. This was a section of downhill from the XC course. Thanks for that day, Tony, Ken, et al; I’ll never forget unicycling through Middle Earth!

Do you see “World Championship level” mountain bike races being run by eight year old girls on 20" wheel department store bikes with pink streamers? Because that’s the kind of rider who signs up for MUni events at UNICON. If you really think the purpose is to have a world championship level event, you need qualifying races and separate courses for riders of different skill levels. You can’t put the girl with streamers on the downhill MTB course.

Put it this way, I had some input on the XC course too, but it was nothing like what I would have liked, nor was it anything close to what I had envisioned.
I thought the course was satisfactory, but more technical and slower than it should have been.

Every other UNICON has favoured DH at the expense of XC (with pretty lame XC courses), so perhaps one day we’ll get them both right. It would mean less crossover between the winners of the XC and DH- one would favour fitness and the other technical ability.

Most mountainbike races at World Cup or World Championship level are run as multiple loops, often in a cloverleaf pattern to maximise vantage points.

I think it works well for them in terms of spectators and making it easier to organise. We followed the multi-lap format for exactly the same reasons. There was discussion about taking the MUni out of town, but we settled on Mt Vic because one of the goals was to showcase our sport to the general public, and it was a 5min walk from the city.

In terms of course length, we went with something that would take just over an hour for the top riders. In comparison, an XC Mountainbike Race at pro-elite level usually takes 2-3hrs. We’re not quite there yet, but we did lift it from the 10-15min races they were previously.

Hear hear. The hard part is getting a venue that is well suited to both, and within a 3-hour bus ride. :slight_smile:

Doing it at Mt. Vic was a HUGE win, if you ask me. The conveninece of location made it possible for people to go train on the course at will, easily visit for Tony’s course orientation ride, and also to be able to say we raced in one of the LOTR filming locations. I’m very glad you held it there.

I think it is possible as long as you take into account the needs of both, and you get XC riders to design an XC course, and DH riders to design a DH course.

I thought UNICON 13 had some pretty amazing terrain for XC- easily could have been the best ever venue sigh

I loved the level of technicality of the XC course at Wellington. It had fast sections to suit the spinners, big climbs to separate the pack and let the fit riders get out in front- and some challenging downs to reward the gutsy technical riders. I don’t think you would want to tame down the XC event too much. Sure you need to reward fitness in a race- but you also need to have technical elements that conversely reward skill. I can see how people saw the NZ course to be leaning towards the technical side of the spectrum. But it was still completely 29er-able but did not give the big wheels an overt advantage. With most people still riding 24/26 sized wheels I think it struck a good compromise. Now if we could of had a 10/15 lap race of that course- then we’d have an enduro XC race to remember!

I think that if there are enough open and inclusive ‘Convention’ style events at a Unicon there is no need to dumb down the big World championship races. If there are good social rides and skills workshops and the like I think you are better catering to your stakeholders- Beginners and top riders alike.

Just a quick question: How is the leg protection requirement of races enforced? If someone turned up with knee warmers, or lycra knee sleeves on- would that count? Is there a standard for that kind of thing.

Good discussion so far- Lets keep it rolling.

Mark

I came in second in my age group in the XC (top-20 overall), and I thought the course was ridiculous for a general-field XC race. The entire field was walking within two minutes of the start (and had to do that climb four times), and two descents (so, eight race sections) were more appropriate for a downhill than XC race. I’ve raced in mountain bike XC races and have never encountered anything like the difficulty level found in the UNICON XC course.

And, eight year olds with streamers were riding it.

If you want an experts-only course, fine, but you have to run a separate race for the rest of the field. UNICON is not only about the top 10 riders.

Now let me chime in on the ball sports. They are affected by some of the same issues as MUni; a relatively small number of serious competitors, and a lot of people who sign up just because it’s the day for basketball or hockey.

The round robins are terrible. The few serious teams demolish the weaker teams, who often don’t bother showing up, or have half of their players out messing around on the trials course or whatever. Actual tournament brackets are impossible to create because the number of teams isn’t really known until the day of the event, and can change even then. Furthermore, there is very little court time for good basketball or hockey between good teams; there is no seeding, so the Berkeley Revolution beating the Australians 32-0 at basketball, or losing 11-0 at hockey, takes just as long as the truly competitive games.

As with MUni, two classes are needed; serious and casual. My proposal is to run casual basketball games as progressive tournaments of 3-on-3 ball. Two courts are open, with the sides numbered 1-4; if your team wins, you move up, if you lose, you go to the back of the line. The games are short, the rules are loose and the players call their own fouls. Any team can join at any time, and leave at any other time. I think the whole thing could be done without prizes, but if you want to have prizes, you could award one point for every game a team wins, most points wins.

The idea is that people want to play, but they don’t really know the game or care about it much. They’d get a chance to play a series of short, relatively competitive games, for as much or as little time as they want to.

The real basketball tournament should require pre-registration, with at least six (or maybe seven) identified team members, and matching team jerseys with numbers. There will be many fewer games, but they will be much longer than in the current format, giving teams more time to play in competitive games. You could even play two games against each team if you only get a small number of registered teams (which is likely).

So a team like mine, which has several people who will fly to Italy almost entirely for basketball, will get more opportunity to play good basketball, and those of us who are interested can mess around in a casual hockey tournament.

We have a definition in the rulebook:

http://iufinc.org/publications

Tell us what you think of that; it took a while to come up with something that said you can’t just wear leg warmers or band-aids, but at the same time wasn’t too restrictive.

@ Johnfoss- I had a look at the definition. It is pretty vague. Are the rules interpreted as spirit of the law- or letter of the law. Because someone could have lycra style sleeves (which cover the whole knee) and just add small hard plastic bits to any point on them and suit the criteria of the definition. How do the IUF rules get changed? I for one, would like to make a case for the removal of such criteria if and when the opportunity arose.

@ Tholub- The way you feel about the Basket ball is the way i feel about the Muni. My ‘girl with tassels on her unicycle’ is your Australian Basketball team. Yes you want them to have a good time- but they are not in the same league as the top competitors. At least with the basketball the good teams still rise to the top and get to have a final- In a way a world championship level game still occurs. A boring muni course does not achieve that. The event you propose for the more social teams is what i propose for the less serious Muni riders- a part of the convention side of things, not the world championship side of things.

And no, not the whole field was walking 2 min in to the XC event. Sure many of them were- but i’m sure the displeasure they felt at being challenged would be much less then a field of good riders left unhappy. There was a shorter race held that day too- so the option was there for riders unwilling or unable to push themselves.

Mark

As I said, I’d be fine with having an experts-only race, but I also understand the logistical difficulty of running extra MUni events.

100% of the field was walking 2 minutes into the XC event. I could see them. There was a sizable hill that was too steep to be plausibly ridden during a race. We were forced to have a short section like that at U Games because of the topology of the park (done twice, two laps), but other than that section the 10km course was entirely rideable by good MUni riders.

My assertion is that the XC course should be almost entirely rideable in flow by a good MUni rider–not only by the top-10 riders.

It was a short section, and probably rideable on a 24".

When I raced mountainbikes competitively, it wasn’t unusual to have certain sections that most of the field of elite riders would be running through. We didn’t use the same course as the 1998 Mountainbike World Cup, but I do have a photo of Cadel Evans (the eventual winner), running down a steep section near the velodrome.

The difference between that and unicycling, of course, is our no-running rule, but that’s a different topic of debate altogether.

It was rideable for a few riders, but probably not during a race (it would be faster/less energy to walk). As I said, I saw everyone walking. And it wasn’t that short a section.

I stand by my assertion.

That’s a good question. With much discussion, it was found that if we got too specific, there was always some form of legitimate knee protection ruled out. The idea is to differentiate between actual protective “stuff” and window dressing.

When the letter of the law is not sufficient (definitely true in the case of this rule/definition), the intent is for the spirit of the law to be enforced by the MUni Referee. He/she would be the judge and jury in the matter of whether someone’s lycra + plastic was sufficient. If it were me (it has been in the past), it would depend on whether that setup would actually stay in front of the knee in a crash. But I couldn’t be too strict about that, as it wouldn’t be “fair”. My own, admittedly aging, Roach armor slid instantly off my knees in my last real crash, and you can still see where I got scraped up. That was more than six months ago.

I wouldn’t disqualify someone wearing Roach armor, unless it totally didn’t fit, or was so old and loose that it clearly wasn’t going to offer any protection. For riders that show up with no or inadequate protection, they need to either find or borrow some or they can’t start.

Then it has to stay on. If your kneepads won’t stay on your knees it could be a problem, if you ride 90% of the race with them around your ankles I can see disqualifying you (it’s not a kneepad if it’s not on your knee). However, it occurs to me that if your knee protection is damaged during the race and will no longer stay on, that should be okay and I would allow it if I were the Referee.

Its a volunteer committee, with interested people from around the world. Some are focused only on certain areas while others have a more general interest and/or expertise. If you’re on the committee you have to participate, and vote when it comes time to do the voting. There’s a rule about not unbalancing the committee with too many people from any one country, which should not be an issue for Australia at this point.

If you want to hate on the person who came up with that rule, I can tell you who it is. It was first introduced at the USA Convention in 1989, and there were a lot of haters then. But never convention hosts. It took a while for the IUF to accept it, but it’s been strictly enforced there at least since we were in Germany for Unicon IX. Leave it to the Germans to strictly enforce! :slight_smile:

Oh, and that person was me.

Online registration is open : http://anmeldung.unicon16.it