Street unicycling - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Street unicycling is one of the latest developments in unicycling. The aim of the sport is to use natural/urban/specially made obstacles such as ledges, handrails and stairs in a given area to perform tricks that look good. The emphasis falls on technical proficiency, style and creativity. Street unicycling draws inspiration from skateboarding and bmx bike riding, with many similar tricks.

For street unicycling, most riders prefer to ride 20" trials unicycles because of their superb hopping abilities and their smooth maneuverability. However, some riders have been known to prefer using the less conventional 24" wheelsize for street riding.

Competition Street Unicycling

The 13th Unicycle World Championships

UNICON

UNICON is the World Unicycling Convention and Championships sanctioned by the International Unicycling Federation .The IUF sanctions a biennial world unicycling convention and competition, the major event on the international unicycling calendar...

(Jul/Aug 2006) played host to the first ever "official" Street Freestyle Competition, while the first ever street street competition was truly at the California Mountain Unicycle Weekend in 2004 (http://www.unicycling.com/muni/2004/). Xavier Collos (France) clinched the world title. Unicycling competitions incorporating street aspects are now more commonplace, possibly due to the influence of other extreme street sports such as skateboarding and aggressive inline.

Hop

The foundation trick of street unicycling, it is analogous to an 'ollie' on a skateboard or 'bunnyhop' on a bike. Hopping is simply jumping on a unicycle using a handle on the front of the seat to pull the unicycle up.

Hoptwists

A hop combined with a mid-air rotation. These are measured in increments of 180 degrees ranging from 180 to 540's.

Unispins

The rider jumps off the pedals or the wheel of the unicycle, spins the unicycle and then lands back either in the hop-on-wheel position or back onto the pedals. These are done in increments of 90 degrees ranging from 90 to 1080 (excluding 900 and 1080 on wheel and 990 up or off). They are named by the amount of rotation. e.g. 180 Unispin.

Big Spin and Small Spin

A small spin is when the rider completes a 180 unispin and body variel at the same time, and a big spin is when the rider completes a 360 unispin and body variel at the same time.

'Flip tricks'

A crankflip involves the rider jumping and simultaneously applying pressure to either the front or back pedal to so the wheel does a full rotation (backwards or forwards) in mid air, before landing back on the pedals.

A common variation of this trick is to make the wheel do multiple rotations (double, triple, quadruple and quintflip crank flips have been done so far). Further variations involve combining unispins, hoptwists or both with a crankflip (or multiple-crankflip).

'Flip tricks' are significant to street unicycling. This is due to the fact that when riding, jumping, and taking feet off the pedals in mid air, the momentum of the wheel causes it to rotate, preventing the pedals from being 'lined up'(horizontal), making it very difficult to land. By flipping the wheel, the rider can control the amount of rotation and land with the pedals lined up correctly. Flip tricks allow for many unispin, twist, and no-footer combinations to be done with speed and distance up/down/across stairs/gaps.

Stances

Natural: The stance in which a rider feels most comfortable jumping and tricking. The natural stance comes in two varieties: left or right foot forward. Both are self-explanatory. On average, more riders hop left foot forward.

Fakie: While riding backwards is not called riding fakie, any trick done while riding backwards is considered to be done fakie and is described with the prefix-fakie (i.e. fakie 360 unispin).