France Picks Up Gold Freestyle Medal at Unicycle World Championships

France won its first gold medal of the Unicycle World Championships when Pierre-Yves Billette was a popular winner of the individual freestyle competition. Billette’s routine combined a high level of technical skill with a very fluid and crowd engaging performance. Despite a couple of small mistakes on very technical manoeuvres, Billettte was able to score enough points to beat a flawless performance by Japan’s Ryohei Matsuka.

Matsuka moved smoothly between the different elements within his programme but could not match the technical variety of Billette. He was though delighted to have imporoved upon his fourth placing in the pairs on Wednesday night.

Swiss David Maillard backed up his gold in the pairs with a bronze medal performance. Based upon Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat it’, Maillard’s routine combined a high level of acrobatic manoeuvres and unicycling skill with a well choreographed routine. Unfortunately a few uncharacteristic errors marred his performance.

In a format that is very similar to ice skating, the unicyclists 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 most pleasing for the competitors’ was the excellent support given by the Wellington public.

“Who would have believed that we could pack out a TSB Arena for a unicycling event” said Event Co-ordinator Lynne Klap. “It gives me incredible pleasure to see the surprised look on the faces in the audience when they witness the beauty and sheer skill of these athletes. We are unlikely to ever see the best ice skaters in a competition in Wellington yet here we have the unicycling equivalent. And all for free”

The artistic freestyle unicycling concludes in the TSB Arena with the group freestyle at 7pm on Saturday January 2nd. The programme then moves on to more of the outdoor events including the 10km criterium, the trials and the cross country.

Unicycle World Championships Results

Freestyle Men

1. Pierre-Yves Billette (France), 2. Ryohei Matsuda (Japan), 3. David Maillard (Switzerland).

Freestyle Women

1. Satoni Sakaino (Japan), 2. Rina Tachibana (Japan), 3. Yuka Sakaino (Japan).

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