Revised Unicycle Trials Rules and Photo Library of Trials Sections

Hi All,

I've re-written sections of the unicycle trials rules and posted a new
draft version at www.krisholm.com/freetrials

There is also a link to a photo library of previously built trials
sections at that URL, or it can be seen directly at
www.krisholm.com/sections

Hopefully the sections photos will be helpful for people designing
sections for new comps. Anybody with good, detailed photos of cool
sections, let me know and I'll add them.

Basically the rules have been re-written to make it simpler and easier
to organize and participate in unitrials comps.

These are the main changes:

1. The method for awarding points to riders has been simplified. There
is no longer a requirement to assign difficulty ratings and point values
to sections. Each section is worth a single point, and the rider who
completes the most number of sections wins.

The reason for this change is that the order of finishers will always be
the same irrespective of the point values of sections, because the
winning rider will always do the most number of sections. This means
that it doesn't matter how many points a section is worth, making
section points irrelevant.

2) I do still think it is important to rate the difficulty of sections,
so that competitors can quickly decide which sections they want to try.
Besides the U-system, I have added a alternative, simplified way to do
this that's based on the difficulty symbols at ski areas.

3) The Guidelines for Course Setters section has also been expanded and
revised- hopefully this will be helpful as well.

When I finish it I'll post a set of generic "freetrials" rules for both
bikes and unicycles, because ultimately I think it would be great if
both biketrials and unitrials communities worked together to do some of
the bigger events.

Cheers,

Kris Holm


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danger_uni wrote:
* photo library of previously built trials sections can be seen
directly at www.krisholm.com/sections

Hopefully the sections photos will be helpful for people designing
sections for new comps.
*


Nice photos! Perhaps captions with a description of the section and its
U-system rating would make them even more useful. Just my 2c.


danger_uni wrote:
*
the winning rider will always do the most number of sections. .
*


Not necessarily true! In a competition with a small number of sections a
rider could concentrate on a few, high value sections and still win
under the U-system ratings.


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Thanks a lot, particularly for the index of photos. A link to the index
will be a great addition to www.unicycle.2ya.com (for the 'Obstacle
Building' section). I have some photos of some great sections from bike
trials competitions here in Australia. I'm just trying to find where I
put them. What's the best way of getting them to you? Email or this
thread?

Thanks a lot,
Andrew


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The rules look really well thought out.

I especially like the part about rock-paper-scissors (or equivalent)
being used in the event of a tie.

What, exactly, is the equivalent of rock-paper-scissors?

-mg


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andrew_carter wrote:
*Thanks a lot, particularly for the index of photos. A link to the
index will be a great addition to www.unicycle.2ya.com (for the
'Obstacle Building' section). I have some photos of some great
sections from bike trials competitions here in Australia. I'm just
trying to find where I put them. What's the best way of getting them
to you? Email or this thread?

Thanks a lot,
Andrew

Edit* - I found one photo (the one with the ladder). This was
really fun and challenging because the rungs were too widely spaced to
wedge the tyre between them (but perfectly spaced for the bikes of
coruse ). I was forced to hop on the tops.

http://tinyurl.com/46v5z

I have more photos somewhere.


If you have a lot of photos, the best is to post them somewhere. If
it's only one or two, then email them to me at


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TonyMelton wrote:
*

Nice photos! Perhaps captions with a description of the section and
its U-system rating would make them even more useful. Just my 2c.

Not necessarily true! In a competition with a small number of sections
a rider could concentrate on a few, high value sections and still win
under the U-system ratings. *


I'll try to include a caption with at least the location, hopefully the
U-rating if I know what it was or can guess at it.

You are right that a theoretically, a rider could concentrate on a few,
high-value sections and still win. This was one reason that the point
values were in there. The other reason was that theoretically a rider
could accumulate a large number of low-point sections and win over a
person who did fewer high point sections. This second scenario could
happen if there were too many sections for a rider to reasonably do in
the time allotted.

However, in actuality neither scenario seems to happen. I've never
seen an event where the organizer has managed to make so many sections
that you couldn't do them in 3 hours- you'd need to build/set over 50
sections and even then, I'd be tempted to just extend the competition
time so people had the opportunity to try everything. Usually it's the
opposite problem- it's hard to make enough sections.

Also, in every event I've been too it has been close enough that you had
to do all sections including the easy ones if you wanted to do well.
Even regardless of this, the majority of riders seem to want to do all
the sections they can do easily, plus as many as possible that they have
trouble with.

Eliminating the point values also eliminates the last bit of
subjectivity to the comps. This is important because with point values
assigned, it's possible that the best rider doesn't win if the point
values were incorrectly assigned to sections.

For example, say the organizer was great at hopping and bad at balance
lines, and consequently gave hopping lines low points (ie felt they were
easy) and balance lines high points. That would mean that riders
who were biased in the opposite direction (bad at hopping, good at
balance lines) would have an advantage in terms of collecting points.
Making everything equal eliminates this possibility.

Kris


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i totaly agree with the simple idea of most sections ridden. at the
comp's i've been to, typicaly only a couple of riders are able to
complete all sections. plus, since all the nethods are unsatisfactory in
some way then the easiest should be used.

however, it would be worth having a thread on the u-value of sections so
that it becomes a solid consensus system. i find it super useful. a ski
hill type system would be too little information. however, i'm talking
as an ex-climber.

as long as there continues to be comps and great energy at them.

john


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unigeee wrote:
*i totaly agree with the simple idea of most sections ridden. at the
comp's i've been to, typicaly only a couple of riders are able to
complete all sections. plus, since all the nethods are unsatisfactory
in some way then the easiest should be used.

however, it would be worth having a thread on the u-value of sections
so that it becomes a solid consensus system. i find it super useful. a
ski hill type system would be too little information. however, i'm
talking as an ex-climber.

as long as there continues to be comps and great energy at them.

john *


OK, then everyone interested in contributing to establishing a solid
U-system please download the revised unitrials rules at
www.krisholm.com/freetrials and check out Section 15 (Guidelines for
Assigning Difficulty Ratings to Sections).

It's a lot harder to establish a solid consensus system for unitrials
compared to climbing, mainly because climbing routes and boulder
problems are permanent features, often described and listed in a
guidebook, whereas most trials obstacles are temporary and usually never
repeated except for other riders in the local area.

In the current U-system table, I attempted to provide general
descriptions of minimum difficulty at each level, plus a few example
obstacles. This isn't a complete list and there's definately room for
improvement. The idea is not to make a comprehensive list, just a
selection of challenges familiar to all riders, that can be used to get
a "feeling" for difficulty at each grade.

Keep in mind that this is NOT a system for MUni except possibly if you
wanted to rate short, trials-oriented sections of trail. For people
familiar with climbing, it's not even a good comparison to climbing
grades, but does parallel bouldering grades.

Also keep in mind that the difficulty of the easiest rating, U0, is
still fairly hard (ie it's not complete beginner level), because it's
very difficult to define obstacles once they drop below a minimum
threshold of difficulty. In bouldering, the easiest bouldering rating
is still moderately hard by roped climbing standards.

The simplified "ski area" method is intended for people who don't want
or need to quantify difficulty to the nth degree and just want a
relative, approximate, easy measure so that riders can choose which
sections they want to attempt at a competiition.

Kris


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danger_uni wrote:
*
You are right that a theoretically, a rider could concentrate on a
few, high-value sections and still win. This was one reason that
the point values were in there. The other reason was that
theoretically a rider could accumulate a large number of low-point
sections and win over a person who did fewer high point sections.
This second scenario could happen if there were too many sections for
a rider to reasonably do in the time allotted.
*


I can see that the 'one section one point' system would eliminate both
these situations. Also it makes course setting much easier for the
organisers because quantification of difficulty is not required to the
nth degree. It also eliminates their own personal skill bias. These
are good reasons to go with the 'one section one point' system.



+o]\[y


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As a course designer (well, one of a few) I found not having to go
through and rate sections to be a big bonus. before Rolf mentioned the
revised system, I was afriad I'd mess it up, and make some really easy
section rated to a high point value. or the opposite. And it cut down
on the course setting time (still, we spent about 11 hours). And it
worked, Krazy karl smoked us by completing all the sections (in 40
minutes, of two hours), and I was second, with 35 of the 40. He was the
clear winner. Seemed fine to me. And no one really complained, much.


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