What’s your perfect unicycle, Loïc Miara?
With his third season on the KH Factory team coming, Loïc Miara has been a whirl of fresh inspiration for many of us. Here, we talk with him about indistructible unicycles, downrails and where he thinks urban unicycling will be ten years from now.
What do you prefer, big jumps or techy tricks?
I would say I prefer to ride big gaps and obstacles but it’s way scarier and more risky than doing techy tricks. Ideally I try to do both to have a more diverse bag of tricks and be able to ride any spot I find on the street. Also, techy tricks on big jumps, why not?
Your favorite riding buddy from a different country?
I really enjoy riding and hanging out with David Moscoe, Jack Sebben and Michael Bachleda. Dave and Jack are from Canada so technically same country but they’re far away enough that it feels like they’re from a different country.
What is your ideal unicycle?
I’m completely satisfied with my KH 20, both sturdy and light, it’s ideal for my riding. I also really appreciate the q factor of spirit cranks to ride stairsets and gaps. I don’t hurt the inside of my foot as much as I used to with smaller q factors on other cranks. In a perfect world, I would want a unicycle that’s purely and utterly indestructible!
What are your goals for this season?
My main goal for this season is to ride more rails. I think what my riding has been missing these past years is a couple of big downrails. I’m starting to perfect my technique on them and I would say it’s going pretty good so far! I’m therefore looking forward to hitting all the rails in Montreal I know about but been too scared to try in the past.
How do you choose locations for awesome riding, and epic videos and photos?
Montreal is such a great city, it is full of different riding spots. Throughout the years, we explored a lot of neighbourhoods to find spots. Each time we found a nice spot we noted its position somewhere and took pictures of it to remember to go there in the future. I also spent quite a lot of time on google maps searching for locations where we could try new tricks. Biking around is also a good source of spot inspiration.
What developments, or style progression, or new tricks do you expect to see in urban unicycling over the next 5 to 10 years? What progressive ideas do you have?
For now, people are integrating more and more coasts into their riding and even though I am not able to do them at all, I enjoy watching it a lot. I’m hoping riders will develop these coasts combos by linking them with even more tricks. I would love to see sideflips on gaps, that’s one of my dream tricks. As for progressive ideas, I’m thinking handplants are cool and creative tricks which haven’t been explored enough so I might play around with those and see what I can get out of them.
Thanks Loïc – here's to another great season.