EUROCYCLE: A EUROpean uniCYCLE meeting


Vodice, Croatia
27 to 30 March 2008


Altenstadt/Bellenberg, Germany
14 to 18 June 2006

(EUROCYCLE 2004 was canceled)


Langenfeld, Germany
22 to 24 August 2003 (Fri-Sun)


Bremen, Germany
31 May - 2 June 2002 (Fri-Sun)


Plymouth, England
20 to 22 July 2001 (Fri-Sun)


Mörfelden, Germany

Hockey results from Mörfelden are here.

Other results are here.

Here's a personal report about Eurocycle 2000 from Sarah Miller:

Site

This years Eurocycle was fairly spread out with camping a ten minute ride form the main hall and the hockey hall a ten min ride the other direction, the woods rally started somewhere else again and the run-fun seemed to be all over town. Mörfelden is a uni friendly town though with bike paths and quiet roads linking all these places so it didn't matter that I kept forgetting to ride on the "wrong" side of the road (I'm from the UK, OK). The camp site was small and full on Friday evening, then on Saturday more people showed up... making it an unfeasably crowded site. I'm just glad there were no cooking stove accidents or droped cig butts. The site was pretty noisy, with a years worth of gossip to catch up on, a nude football game one night, an alarm clock try out another night and Trine's phone ringing at 5am. Then there were the planes. We were only a few km from the runways of a major airport, and the planes came directly over head from about 5.30 am every 10 - 20 minutes. Breakfast on the campsite was an excellent idea, the Mörfelden club laid on a buffet breakfast for those who got up early enough and brought their own dishes, a good way to start the day. Food was avalible all day at the main hall thanks to the parents of the club, their efforts with the BBQ, chips, cakes and coffee were much appreciated and good value even if we did have to use pre-bought tokens to avoid having cash at the BBQ area. Even at the hockey hal, filled rolls and cake were on sale and there was a free soft drink on tap most of the time at the two main sites.

On the whole the spread out nature of it all worked, but we were lucky with the weather, only one sharp downpour for half an hour or so. People did have to make choices about what they wanted to do and some things clashed with hockey (hence I didn't do either the woods rally or the run-fun) but that's the nature of a hockey tornament as part of another event. Without the choices it would just be another hockey tournament and not so many people would enjoy the weekend. I never did find out where the official race would have been run as it was cancelled, an un-official time trial took place on the cycle path to the hockey hall instead. I'm still not sure why the official race was canceled... As I say my german is not too good and relatively little "rules" info was printed in English when we arrived on Friday. Eventually I saw the English rules for fun-cycle on the Sunday evening, after the fun-cycle events had finished... It was a little difficult for the 60 or so non-german speakers to fathom out what was going on at times, some of the Danish kids were very bewildered and the race was something they had been looking forward to as the rules are pretty obvious, a-b in fastest time. There was plenty of gym space for free riding, and it never seemed crowded. My mini giraffe made lots of new friends, I learnt a new trick - under the leg nose picking - and finally got somewhere with wrong foot one footing. I also watched amazed as people shot up and down the hall gliding and coasting, hopped around with feet on wheel spinning the saddle around as they did so... The skill levels around were stunning to my untutored mind. At this rate I'll spend Unicon picking my jaw up from the ground.

The Show

This years show was a mixed bag, every thing from a TINY uni (about 25 cm high) to the awesome artistic cycling of Julian on two wheels. Taking in the talents of other members of the SKV Mörfelden in trampoline and belly-dance. A small gripe for the Danish, French, English and Belgian members of the crowd was that we did not understand anything the compere said, so had little idea who was who or what their credentials were. A four girl team of artisic bike riders from SKV Mörfelden demonstrated their poise and skill on one and two wheels, mainly one as they spun and twisted in formation wheelies. This was the first group art bike routine I've seen and I was very impressed, the next day I was allowed to try one out and found it much harder than these lasses made it look. Manfred played with beer and many unis large and small, the TINY uni arrived on stage in a bag and was so small that you'd lose it on a busy carpet. The largest was a tri-wheeler giraffe with a bc wheel and plenty of seat dragging and impressive tricks in between. A pair of girls showed off on one uni, look out Sem and Theresa these kids were good, another pair unied to Singing in the Rain. Belly dancing was sureal, no, the dancing was odd and the two small camels with multi-coloured socks were sureal. The Smiling Faces filled the stage with shiney costumes and lots of riders, my first group free style so again I was impressed but I had nothing to compare them agaist. I did like the Mexican wave mount start though. Thriller! Um, more dance... no unis, lots of make up, not convinced this one was a good choice, but I think they were from the SKV. Trampoline started the second half off with 4 girls who did hard stuff and a little kid who stole the show with his slighty wobbly pikes and tucks, at his diminutive size climbing onto the bed unaided was worth a round of applause. Julien wowed us with his solo art bike routine, circling the stage stood on saddle and handle bars, treating the bike like a zig zag giraffe and generally being very good at it. In the UK the nearest we get to that kind of skill is the flatland BMXers whose style is rather less show-biz, this euro art bike thing was an eye opener. Arne brought the show to an end with his fire club swinging in the dusk, then all the acts took a last bow and the show was over, time for a beer. The UK misfits enjoyed a beer or three, finding a hidden talent in the team for close to harmony beer bottle blowing. Hum, there's a renagade act in there I feel.

Hockey

It was hot, very hot, and mostly sunny so we all got to top up our tans except when we were shut in a hall playing hockey. We played a lot of hockey, in a complex double knock-out system which gave even losing teams masses of games and placed each team 1-16. There were two competitions this year, the best-team group and the normal-team group. Best were basicly the top 7 German clubs and Denmark (a late entry after the normal group was full). The normal group had 16 teams, games were 10 min each, and after their game each team supplied two officals for the next game. Teams were sure to get at least 4 games each. Representing players from 6 european countries, (3 nationalities in UK misfits alone). This was a truely international tournament. As goalie for UK misfits my recollection is of course subjective. We won our first 3 games, having to work hard to beat Düsseldorf who have some excellent girls playing for them now. We played an English style game, forcing the opposition to defend and trying to limit their attacking. Playing against us was likened to playing pinball, the "flippers" were going bang bang with the ball at the goal all the time. Eventually we met our match in the Radlos team who beat us 2:1 a low scoring very tight game. Radlos went on to come second. Our final game was agaist The Braves, a fast skilled team from Switzerland who trounced us. Our nippy 20 inch riders were outrun by fast 24 inch riders and were unable to play our "pinball" style game that had been working so well. The Braves went on to win the normal group. In the best-team group, Bochum met Lahimo in an action packed final. Great to watch two good teams tussling for the match.