I see that unicycling is NOT an olympic event. What can we unicyclers do to introduce unicycling to the olympic community? I would like to see unicycling as an olympic sport.
Write them a pleading letter. Remember to throw some chocolates in the envelope. And spray it with perfume.
and if that doesn’t work you got a baseball bat…
I think some work has been done to get unicycle racing as a demonstration sport.
I think the Olympics have “splurged” too far. The original idea was running, jumping, riding and throwing: the skills that a warrior would have needed in ancient Greek times.
An olympics that contains tennis, hockey, football, synchro swimming and so on seems to miss the point for me - especially when top professional players are taking part in some sports.
Unicycling fits nicely with bicycling which is already established as an Olympic sport.
However, to be an Olympic sport, you need to have a well established international competitive base. That means more than a handful of serious riders taking part in only a handful of races each year.
Unfortunately, as unicycling has such a “novelty” image, it is unlikely to be in the Olympics for some time.
I wouldn’t mind seeing 100, 200, 400, 800 metre flat races on a standard wheel size. I do not think that trials and freestyle naturally fall within the Olympic spirit.
I could see freestyle along side figure skating in the winter olympics.
If anything, I would say Unicycling would fit right in at the X-Games. Trials, street, flat and even Muni could be featured. Just find a contact for the X-Games and start sending emails and phone calls to see what needs to be done.
This has been discussed to death as well, and I personally think that unicycling has no place in the X-Games, for the simple fact that we can’t go anywhere near as ‘big’ as the other x-game sports do.
I agree, after watching the unicon paired freestyle unicycling video, it looks like there on skates the way they move.
After reading all the replies I want everybody who posted to know that BADMINTON is an olympic sport. As much as I enjoyed badminton in my younger days I find it hard to believe that badminton can garner enough interest to become an olympic sport.
That said I think us unicyclers need to look into what can be done to raise enough interest to promote unicycling to olympic standards. If badminton can make it to the olympics unicycling can to.
I agree with dtecum! Unicycling is nore interesting than badminton, think how many views unicycling would get for the Olympics, people love watching unicycles!
Distance unicycling should be in the Olympics, but there aren’t enough road unicyclists. If you think like I do there is an obvious answer, everyone needs to get a 36!
Next we would set up events around the world similar to RTL and go for it… we’ll be in the Olympics in no time!
i actually watched it on the olympics last night… and i got to say man it is pretty intence… and some of them ladies… yummy
In order to be an Olympic event you need participation from 70 countries for men’s events, and 40 for women’s. How many countires were represented at Unicon?
For Olympic level competition to be meaningful, you need a significant number of people who are prepared to commit at least 4 - 8 years of their lives to full time or nearly full time training, correct sports nutrition, professional coaches and so on.
That won’t happen in unicycling until there is a recognised circuit of national and international events and big prize money available. I can’t recall last time I saw even a national unicycle championship at a major athletics stadium in the UK…
Take a top runner like Paula Radcliffe: she chooses which country to live in for various parts of her year to optimise her training opportunities. She runs miles every day, day in, day out, for years.
I used to know someone until a year or two back when I gave up fencing who was in training for the Olympics: the 2012 Olympics. She was struggling to raise sponsorship to travel to European and world championships to compete against the best in her sport to gain the experience to help her five years in the future.
Is there anyone here who unicycles at that level of intensity for that long: night after night for year after year focussing on one discipline, maybe only one distance?
Come to think of it it would be very tough… and only a few if anyone is THAT dedicated. And I think it was 22 countries at unicon.
29 springs to mind.
I agree with RUBIX. It could be a great event in the x-games. I really doubt that it could be in the Olympics though. I just think that people racing around a track on unicycles would be considered a comedy act to many people. (That’s not how I view it, I just think that many poeople will never see unicycling as an olympic event). But, seeing as curling is an olympic event, maybe there’s hope…
BMX was let in this year for the first time, and it took years and years of X-Games competitions to get the sport big enough.
Unicycling will never be in the X-Games because you can’t go “big” as has been said a thousand times already. The only way we’ll ever see it in the olympics is freestyle comps like figure skating - and that will probably never happen.
Is skateboarding in the olympics? nah. Theres x-games for that. Get unicycling in the x-games, then think about the olympics.
That’s not even a remotely fair comparison. Unicycling has a much better chance of being the olympics than the x-games - skateboarders can get a lot of air, and that’s essentially what the crowd loves. Unicycling, not so much - as impressed as we are by treyflips and the like, all street and flatland essentially looks the same to the common audience member. The closest we come to x-games material is ‘big street’, and even that is small fries compared to some of the shit these skaters are pulling off.
However, both racing and old-school freestyle are very viable unicycling events to add to the olympics, simply because racing of many types is already a staple of the games, and freestyle unicycling resembles figure skating in many ways.
The X-games are lame sause.