Yesterday in Vancouver there was a really cool invitational pro/expert biketrials comp, run as a “freetrials” comp with unitrials rules.
About 20 of Canada’s best biketrials riders were there, which made it a great place to showcase the new rules format and see what people thought (see picture below).
In general people loved it! Sections were amazing, although very bike- oriented with minimum 36" ups on most sections.
Hopefully this style of comp will continue to get more popular in the biketrials world, as it it definately is a lot more fun to compete in on a unicycle.
are you riding up the pointy edge of that beam? I cant really tell from the pic. Good lord, normal rails just arent small enough for you, huh? Thanks for sharing Kris. ohh and who else was there?
did you compete in the same category as the bikers?
when you say people loved it, do you mean the audience, the riders, or both?
i assume you were using a lot of pedal grabs. how strictly were dabs enforced (meaning, how strict were they about counting the heel or toe of the shoe touching down around the pedal)?
you mentioned it was very bike oriented. was there anything that you couldn’t handle on your uni?
I was the only unicycllist there, and would have come 3rd out of 7 in the expert category, and last place in the pro-category. The only section I did well in compared to the bikes was the one in this picture, which was cleaned by 4 out of the 25 pro and expert riders including the top 2 finishers.
There were quite a few sections that weren’t possible on a unicycle because of the high hops required- several sections required hops higher than 6 feet but could be rolled up on a bike. On the other hand, there weren’t any really hard balance lines except for the beam on its edge and a loose chainlink that was a lot easier on a bike because they could nose their front wheel up and off the end of it (see the picture).
Designed properly, I think you could create a course with smaller, more balanced-oriented riding where unicyclists would do well against even the best bikers though, and this could be a lot of fun.
Bikes don’t have an advantage for riding thin rails. But on a bike you can do MUCH bigger moves due to the mechanical advantage- for example some lines had 9 foot gaps. You can also hop much higher to rubber, and hook your front wheel over things. For example, on of the sections was to go directly up the 6.5’ high vertical side of the spool in the background of the top picture, without any kind of jump (and then jumps are another story)…
The better question of course is who is having more fun!
how come u didnt go to test of metal this year?? and r u coming to backyard bash this year? should be fun! im sponsored by george white so let me know if your goin and ill tell the other guys to come to. Ive gotten quite a bit better since the 2003 test of metal so ill give ya a run for your $$$ lol
but im trying to get dan heaton to go to. so plz come because we need to show the bikers what the uni scence is all about.
If the unicycle trials rules were used, was the U-system for setting up courses discarded due to U-system being (according to the hops/drops kris is describing) comparatively easy for bike trials?
I did go to the Test of Metal, just one day early! I couldn’t make it on the sunday so went on saturday when it was being set up, and rode the sections. Nice and peaceful, actually- I quite enjoyed it. Sounds like there was a good turnout- glad you could make it.
Regarding using the U-system on this event: They essentially made up their own relative point scoring system and used that. It worked pretty well although I don’t think it was necessary- the results would have been similar even if each obstacle had only one point, because everyone had plenty of time to try all the obstacles.
Thanks for sharing Kris. ohh and who else was there?
lol