I guess we would have to settle on a definition of what qualifies one as a world champion. The strictest definition would probably be someone who has won first place in a non-divided (by age or skill group) competition event at an IUF World Championships competition, aka Unicon.
Other unicycle competition events, ones that are not available at Unicon, could claim an ability to generate world champions, though people may argue if it’s a “true” world championship if not recognized by the IUF. These issues haven’t really come up yet, so there’s not a policy for such things.
Winning an age group event at Unicon indicates you were best out of that age group, so that can also be claimed as a world champion performance, but you are only the world champion of your age group, and cannot claim to be the world champion of the larger event.
For publicity purposes, people claim to be world champions all the time and in some cases, never even competed at a Unicon. By the same token, one might give accurate, detailed information to a newspaper, who will then just print that you are the “world champion of unicycling” or something.
World record holder and world champion are mutually exclusive. Records can be set anywhere, but if it wasn’t part of a world champion competition event, it doesn’t make you a world champion.
Jamey is an amazing, strong unicyclist and probably has several world champion titles though I don’t know which. Here are a few of my favorite ones:
Pairs Freestyle, Unicon I
Individual Freestyle, Unicons II, III and IV
Standard Skill, Unicon IV
Overall Track, Unicon IV
(There was no overall track title at Unicons I-III)
UMX/MUni, Unicon VII (there was just the one XC race)