[Long jump] Wheel size categories (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
There are two different approaches to long jump and they are different enough to separate them into 19/20" and unlimited categories. Street and trials riders competing on 19" unicycles are generally not competitive against riders on larger wheels. The competition can be run exactly as it is now, but 19/20" wheels would also be scored on their own.
Comment
Track racing used to be done on 20" and 24", with separate races for all age groups. This was in the 70s, before the IUF was created. By then, the 20" category of racing had "died out" because it was silly to try to ride really fast on something so slow. (Side conversation could be started about why we still do Track on 24", but not here!)
If bigger wheels can jump farther, why use a Trials wheel? I kind of like the idea of the newer forms of competition being "unlimited" in nature. Who can jump the farthest. If smaller wheels are to be separated out, I'd prefer it be an optional thing.
Comment
I like Spencers idea and I thought since a while that this could be a good idea. The 19"20" jumpers are typically Trial, Street and Flat riders which do rolling or side hops and they usually never ride a bigger uni and also dont own a bigger one.
The new style is dominated more by racers that use 24"26" unis and go for the distance more by speed then by the "classic" jump style the 19" riders use. Both is impressive and both is very different. I see also here sometimes longjump on pallets which was dedicated to the 19" riders as it allow only static hops. There you have to jump from a pallet stack to another and as more far you jump as higher the stacks go which looks spectacular and even feels spectacular. Maybe another option to bring back all the 19" riders into longjump.
Comment
Sounds like Olaf is offering a second version of Long Jump, using a different method so it could probably use a different name. Traditional Long Jump is the unlimited one, and the one most similar to the Olympic version. This is a side hop, so maybe call it Side Jump (sounds bigger than Side Hop) or something. Different rules, different enough from the other Long Jump to make both interesting to watch! Also I think no need to limit wheel size, as long as the launch platform prevents people from building speed.
Does anyone think we would have to restrict the way you jump, or just provide a relatively small platform to start? Then it can be a side hop, forward hop or whatever people can think up without any need for additional rules or restrictions.
Comment
I'm not suggesting additional rules requiring the rider to jump in a certain way. High and long jump are pretty much the foundation of trials and street so riders who focus on that should be able to compete against each other in that context. High jump works well for that group of riders, but they can't compete in long jump as a street or trials skill because they are a big disadvantage if they use a street/trials unicycle. If we think that street/trials riders competing in long jump is desirable then we should include it as a category, otherwise they'll be out of place like just riding flatland as a freestyle routine.
Comment
It is exactly like Spencer discribe, I just thought that the other way of longjump would fit good here too.
However, I see no problem to add a second wheel size Category to longjump as it change nothing for the host then some more medails but the 19"er will get back their competition again. So my Suggestion would be to have a 20" and a unlimited category (we shold define maybe the outer diameter as it is always, maybe a 2,6x19 or a 2,7x19 is the max in diameter. Would be good if some can measure that have this more rare format)
Comment
When setting the maximum wheel size for Track unicycles, we added 1/3 inch to the "nominal" size, then may have gone up or down a mm or two to make final sizes that fit better together. In other words, a 24.3333" wheel is 618mm in diameter. 20" came out close enough to use 518mm for that size, and 16" was set at 418mm. And then 29" was set at 768mm to make the Unicyclist.com community smile. :-)
In other words, we went larger than any non-knobby 24" tires we could find at the time. That made sense for track but for Long Jump, knobby tires are more the norm. I would survey riders out there to measure the circumference of their fattest tires to see how big they actually are. Use circumference because diameter is very hard to measure otherwise without a T-squre or somehing similar to reach in from a line parallel to the end of the axle. Add a little bit to the fattest tire provided (assuming it's a viable tire for doing Long jump).
The end number will probably be quite a bit more than 518mm, which is 20.39 inches. I'm just recommending to leave some headroom, because tires tend to get larger over time.
Comment
Hello together,
sorry for late response, I was permanently on business trips in the last weeks.
I'm wondering what happens here.
If a rider male / begins in jumping, he (she) will normaly starts with a 20" Muni.
That means in age group 0 -10 are only 20" munis.
Bigger muni normally you can find in age groups 15 -30.
The dimensions of bigger long jump munis are 24"x2,5 or 26" x 2,5. That means the diameter is completely difference to the standard size and therefore it makes no sense to press it in the dimensions of track unicycles.
The jumper is rely on that the wheel is big to have a spring effect.
Next:
most jumper use rolling hop, also 20" muni jumpers, very less jumper use side hop
Even in a world champion ship you will not have enough jumpers to have interested age groups for diffence wheel dimensions.
Therefore for me It makes no sense to specify anything on wheel dimensions.
Comment
I guess you will have enough interested riders as a lot of the 19" riders just stop jumping as they have no chance against the 24/26" riders. It is also not related to age groups, it is based on the disciplines. Trial / Flat / Street Riders often only ride and only have a 19" Uni, Muni riders typically use their 24/26" Muni and Race riders typically use a 24/26" Uni also but often with shorter Cranks. So tho have 20" Category and unlimited will make sense at least at a Unicon and other bigger events. For sure at a race championship you wont find a lot of 19" Street/Flat/Trial riders.
Comment
I personally think that in general, adding more categories is lame and boring. However, I absolutely understand that 19" riders want an event to compete in like long jump. I suggest we add pallet gap/long gap as a separate competition. This really emphasises the need of a trials uni, and I think it looks much more interesting for photos and in the public media. I think that 19" unicycles doing normal long jump looks kind of boring.
Comment
I agree on that with Scott
Comment
Long Gap. I like the name! It's clear, and similar to Long Jump so people should understand it instantly even if they don't know what unicyclists mean by "gap".
I like the idea of approaching it that way, as a Long Jump-type event that's better suited to the smaller wheels. But still no need for wheel size restrictions in either; bigger wheels just will be heavier things to gap with.
Like any event we add, we are providing a set of rules for it, not requiring the next host to run it. Unless we do, which should be a separate discussion. Many of our events are optional, but are still held at nearly every Unicon. This way the event can be tried out, and after a few times we will get an idea of whether or not it attracts enough riders. I think this one will, because it's a variant on the other type of Long Jump.
Remember 700c (29") Track racing? We had a whole set of rules for those, but the events were optional. I'm still curious why they never caught on; perhaps because it was yet another wheel to bring. But I still think 24" racing these days is silly, since those wheels are so small...
Comment
Conclusion:
Option 1: simply add the 20" category for normal longjump - nice for the 19" riders, maybe boaring for the audience
Option 2: add what Scott call long gap (maybe simply gapping), discribed in comment 3 - also nice for the 19" riders and much more spectacular
Option 3: do nothing
Should be pointed out that it is not a big deal to do gapping where a Trial competition happens, I see it some times with 3 stages of hight and each stage has min and max distance. Like:
first 2 stacks 3 pallets high and from 50cm up to 1 meter
second 3 stacks 5 pallets high and from 1 meter to 1,50 meter
third stack 7 pallets hich and from 1,50 meter to the max a rider can gap
(one pallet is typically 15cm high)
Comment
Are we talking about having a long pallet runway and a pallet landing area that can be incrementally moved back? If so, that's a cool idea. It would be easier to tell if someone didn't land on the platform than if they didn't hit a stick. I don't see the need to increment the height though, keeping it one or two pallets high the whole time would probably result in fewer injuries and longer gaps.
I don't know if we'd still see a mix of 19" and 24/26" with a big performance gap between them, but we don't have to solve that problem until it becomes one.
Comment
I see "long gapping" in two variations. One with a long pallet runway and several with just jumping from pallet stack to pallet stack. The second is what I described and which is more easy to do but its only static jumps then. What you describe is also big fun and should be done only on one fixed night as you wrote. For big wheels its bad as it is difficult to land and stop on the one pallet wide landing surface. It is definitely both made for 19" unicycles.
Comment
What I had pictured for the Long Gap was a pallet to pallet jump, made with no or limited momentum. The kind of jump a Trials rider might need to do in order to get from one small object to another. This would work well as a spectator event because it would be very different from the regular Long Jump.
The pallets would not have to be high off the ground, but if we're thinking of spectators it might be nice to raise them up so people can see.
I believe it's important to think of the spectator aspect of competition events, at least when we're designing new ones. Maybe someday non-unicyclists will want to watch our sports. If they ever do, we'll suddenly have something to sell! :-)
The runway version of a pallet gap/jump would essentially be the same thing as the regular Long Jump, with the addition of worse consequences if you don't make the distance.
Comment
Like John says, Long Gap on makes sense as a more trials style event, where it's a pallet to pallet jump without a runway.
I'm not sure if I suggest making the pallets so high like Olaf suggests. I don't think riders would want to try their hardest to make a big gap if they are 1 meter or more high. Also, the setup build becomes more difficult to make stable when it's so high. Having a stable and stiff platform is very important when making the jump.
Comment
I think there's an argument for having a pallet runway, but if you think that "long gap" should be a point to point side hop comp then my initial discussion still applies, and we should add a 20" category to normal long jump. The solution to the big gap between street/trials riders in long jump and riders on big wheels isn't solved by not allowing you to rolling hop.