Swiss Men Win Artistic Pairs at UnicycleWorld Championships

Crowd favourites David Maillard and Gilles Saudan from Switzerland took out the artistic pairs at the Unicycle World Championships with their rock themed performance. Combining a high level of skill, entertaining theatrics and incredible strength, the Swiss pair entranced the capacity audience at the TSB Arena in Wellington. The pair differentiated their performance form the other nine finalists with their lifting, especially when Maillard held Saudan in a horizontal position above his head while circling the arena.

The second half of the Swiss routine had the crowd calling for more as the Swiss stripped off items of clothing while performing unicycling manoeuvres that were technically extremely difficult. Maillard and Saudan were the reigning champions having also won in Denmark in 2008.

The Swiss were the clearest example of a difference in style between the very fluid balletic style of the Japanese and the European focus on the technical unicycling skills.

In unicycling mixed, women and men pairs compete against each other rather than in separate divisions. In a format that is very similar to ice skating, the pairs are given four minutes for their routines and they are judged on a combination of fluidity of movement, the variety of movements, level of difficulty and audience interaction.

For those new to unicycling it was very easy to forget that the competitors were cycling on a single wheel as their movements seemed to be as smooth as those of an ice skater.

The artistic skating continues in the TSB Arena with the individual expert on Friday January 1st and the group freestyle on Saturday January 2nd. The organisers are expecting to again fill the TSB Arena after the success of the pairs competition.

Results

Artistic Expert Pairs

1. David Maillard and Gilles Saudan (Switzerland) , 2. Kaito Shoji and Yuka Fujimoto (Japan), 3. Satomi and Yuka Sakaino(Japan).

Kaito Shoji and Yuka Fujimoto

Subscribe to the comments for this post