Impact Unicycles EUC16 Report

Impact Unicycles Team Results.

Lorenz Pöham-  1st Flatland
Mark Fabian – 1st Trials
Raphael Pöham – 2nd Street
Mike Taylor – 1st Highjump (New world record with Aidan Teleki)
Tim Desmet – 3rd Trials

Márk Fábián :-
EUC winter now feels like an official (extreme unicycling) holiday – although after 7 years, I am still really excited about leaving to Cologne year by year. Seeing all my good friends there feels like a second Christmas, the whole one wheeled family is together. Arriving late Thursday with the Hungarian Team, we were just in time to chat and have a short ride with the homies who already arrived from Austria (the Pöham Bros, Emile, Aidan, Damien, Matej and Torda); and then put ourselves to sleep to get ready for Friday – building the trials course and start the event.

A nice team of volunteers set up to work on the trials course, while more and more people arrived to the hall. Was a great Friday afternoon thinking of challenging trials sections, a bit of riding & seeing everyone getting together for EUC. Flatland went well, usual EUC style: great riders, high level, stunning battles and amazing spirit. It’s always a pleasure to see how friendship (or bromance?) is stronger than the competition.

Besides the crazy tricks, another highlight of the evening was watching Broject and Renowned Series best of 2015 together with all the EUC people – hard to describe with words what you feel when watching such a masterpiece with a huge bunch of riders… After the cinema session, a lot of people started helping with trials course, so we were almost finished when went to bed. Next morning we started with numbering the lines, and then the trials prelims began! Now I would like to say another thank you to all the judges who were so cool to help us with the trials so much!

The qualification was a tough run! At the end, there was just one line which I missed (so as Jonas), so the last few minutes we spent trying to get up a huge tractor tire together – this time we didn’t succeed, so we both were missing 1 line. The second heat went down well too, Aidan, Mike, Pierre, Aleix and Elias were killing the lines! That tire line seemed to be challenging to everyone, Aleix, Pierre and Elias also ended up trying that only one too. And then, Elias just did it, winning the Trials qualifications. Pierre, Jonas, Aleix and I tied on the 2nd place.

After the trials we started the preparation for the high jump competition. We used the new rules, when everyone had 12 tries to jump as high as they could. I was first a bit skeptic with the new rulebook, but I liked how the whole competition went. Tim, Pierre, Mike, Aidan and I got 9 pallets (130cm), and then we continued to 138. Only Aidan and Mike could jump it, setting a new official world record together.

The schedule moved on to street then, while the trials finalists started to build lines for the finals. During that, my teammate Kornél showed up with his wheelset after breaking a couple spokes. After a quick maintain he finished his street qualification run (and then got qualified to the finals). This time, slope style street rules were used, so the riders had to show their tricks and skills on one long line; keeping the flow and having style. And then, the trials finals was next… the courses were ready, judges were ready, riders were ready! 45 minutes started counting, and there were 7 super hard lines to complete. The lines were not just so difficult, but also good to ride on, all the sections were unique and good on their own. Everyone performed very well, I would like congratulate all the riders who competed!

Raphael Pöham :-
EUC was awesome, great competitions and so good to meet all the different riders from other countries again. I’m really happy I can be part of such an amazing community! Flatland didn’t go that great for me, but I got second in Slopestyle Street with which I’m really happy

Mike Taylor :-
This year’s EUC winter was awesome, the riding was great as always and it’s always a pleasure to be around so many other unicyclists in one place. It was good to see all the Impact team together and appear on nearly every podium. I managed to finish in second place in intermediate flatland which I was pleased about. I also finished joint first in high jump with Aidan Teleki and set a new world record of 138cm onto a platform. Every time I go to EUC I always become so motivated to ride more when I return home. The community is strong, everyone is always so friendly and the organisation was so good this year. I’d like to thank everyone and the sponsors who made it possible and I always recommend EUC to any riders that want to start competing and just having a good time meeting other riders. I was proud to be part of the Impact Team at EUC winter 2016. Bring on Unicon!

Tim Desmet :-
EUC was as always just awesome! So much friends at one place, all having fun. I enjoyed every bit of it. The organisers did a really good job in organising everything, the competitions were well managed and the drinks were cheap.In general really nice competitions, only a bit too much on Saturday. Because I was qualified for both trial and street final (together with Elias and Pierre) I had to compete in 5 competitions on Saturday which was really exhausting .

Flatland
Really nice competitions, strong competitors who threw down some really cool tricks. The battles were really nice to watch as well. I personally had a bad qualification run so didn’t manage to get in the battles, but I was able to show my seatwhip as last trick so I’m really happy about that J .

Trials
The qualifications round was a lot of fun, with a lot of fun lines, although the lines could have been made a bit harder and with less pedalgraps I think it was perfect for the qualifications round. After the qualification round 8 riders were selected for the final (with most of the impact riders selected). Levente and Elias were also selected but couldn’t compete due to an injury. In total there were 7 lines, all really nice diverse lines, focussing on different parts of the trial discipline. Just a little shame everyone was just way too tired to ride at their full potential (trail finals was at the end of the day after all other competitions, so it was my 5th competition that day..). Nevertheless, Mark Fabian did again an amazing job and made 6 of the 7 lines, which is insane!

Street
There was decided to do a slopestyle competition, where every riders get 2 runs (and 3 run in the final) by which the best run counts. Really nice way to do a street competition and has a lot of potential for the future! The run itself was not perfect, I prefer just a straight line to do a run. However at the run of EUC this wasn’t the case, so you had to do some tricks and then turn 90° do continuing.

Lorenz Pöham :-
Overall EUC went down very well for me. It was an awesome event with lots of people and I could take a 1st place in Flatland back home. But that’s not the most important thing to me, it’s more about beeing together and enjoying the time with all your friends. I also would like to thank everybody who was involved for organising this EUC. Thumbs up!

Elias Pöham :-
For sure, EUC winter in cologne is always my favourite event of the year. It is always so much fun! There is not any EUC winter I missed yet, and I am proud for that! This time it was a bit unlucky for me. In trials qualification I qualified 1st place. I was the only rider who did all the lines. After I took part in the street qualifications, I bailed really hard and wasn’t able to ride the trials finals afterwards…

Damien Dyonne :-
Before talking about EUC, I wanted to talk short about my pre-EUC road trip. More than just riders, we are now friends and family, it’s why I went to poham’s place before EUC to have some fun there. And, indeed, we had fun. We rode unicycle in their very special basement, but we also had some skiing, ice-skating, and bowling session. We went to Innsbruck for partying and we got really nice moments there with the Pohams, Emile, Aidan, Torda, Krisz and Matej. After this short week, we came to Köln for the EUC. As usual, it was awesome. Every people improving together, having fun and… All these crazy competition. Every EUC is getting crazier year after year !  Later, few days after EUC, I spent some time in Netherlands, and met Casper for one day in Amsterdam chilling on the city by bike. Finally, It hink the best part of this « EUC road trip » was to talk more personnaly with every riders of the team, and spend more time than just fews minute during conventions. That’s why I’m now really talking about a family and friends. This is unicycle spirit.

Casper Van Tielraden :-
A few weeks ago I attended my 6th EUC Winter. Just like every other year it was amazing! Unicycling is one, but riding and hanging out with your buddies makes it all even better. I got on the train from Holland on friday and we started out with the flat comp that same night. Awesome prelims! I qualified 5th and had the great pleasure to battle my team mate Raphael in the first round. It turned out to be probably the most fun battle I had ever done.  I ended up taking fourth place and I was really happy with the results. Next day I went out to get some food in the city of Cologne and met up with a bunch of Australians I had never met before. Simply awesome, what a great mindset and vision these guys have. We just wandered around the city and some shops for a bit and it was just perfect. Later that day the awesome trail comp began. I didn’t compete in trails but that means I get to see awesome riders like Jonas from Denmark, Mark, and a guy I love to see kill it, Levente, shred around the lines! Street didn’t go too well for me this year but it was fun and well organised by Emile from Quebec, CA. Overall another event with a great atmosphere. So much more stuff happened like trying to make trickshots from the balcony or messing around in the skatehall on different object. Mad fun!

For more picures visit the EUC16 facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/WinterEuc/

For all the results visit the EUC16 Website
http://euc16.camponthecrank.com/en/