Better naming for the Jumps events
Comments about this discussion:
Started
This idea grew out of a discussion about whether the "Track" jumps need to be held on an athletics track surface. Sharing a bit about the history of these events' development, I was reminded that their names are awkward. This proposal idea is about giving them names that better represent what each one is, but with an eye on making sure the final names are translation-friendly (don't come out awkward when translated).
The original idea of the earlier two events, was to emulate the High Jump and Long Jump from regular Athletics. Of course we made them harder, you have to land on your wheel and ride away, no landing on your back or butt! So those events were called High Jump and Long Jump, just like the Athletics versions.
Trials competitions, and Trials unicycles, did not exist when we started doing High and Long Jump. But it wasn't long before Trials riders pointed out that those two events, while challenging might be better represented by the types of jumps Trials riders do. When jumping for distance, it's usually a way to see how far you can get to land on an object. This is often called Gapping; jumping over a gap. For height, Trials riders don't usually try to get over a bar, instead they try to get up onto things, like ledges or platforms.
I would like to propose the following names for these competitions:
- High Jump
- Long Jump
- Gap Jump
- Ledge Jump or Platform Jump
Please offer feedback on this idea, or alternate names, or whether you prefer Ledge or Platform.
I do not have a document or email that tells who or how many people are on each sub-committee of this Rulebook Committee. I don't know who is in this group other than Klass Bil. Please respond and say Hi so we know who we are. Thanks!
Comment
Frankly, I think the names as they currently are, are better than your suggestion.
In my view there are two types of High Jump, so naming one of them just "High Jump" is confusing.
Similar with Long Jump.
"Platform Jump" could easily be (mis)understood as jumping from platform to platform. I think at least we need "High" resp "Long" in every jump name.
Comment
Hi John, you can check the member list of every sub-committee if you click "Member" on the menu, or just follow this link.
For the record, we currently have the following names:
- High Jump over Bar
- High Jump onto Platform
- Long Jump on Track
- Long Jump on Platform
I understand your perspective about Long Jump on Track, and that is a right point that the event is not always organized on athletic track surface - especially since these events has been moved to the Urban disciplines group from Racing. Though when the opportunity is given, for instance at U19 in Korea, it is held on track. In my opinion, I would prefer to keep the name "Long Jump on Track" for at least 3 reasons:
- It holds the heritage from the grassroots of Jumps events.
- I am not a native English speaker, so correct me if this is a wrong assumption, but since track doesn't exclusively refers to an athletic field, and since at the competition riders are required to jump over the metal bars on a course or track marked along its two sides, I think that sort of classifies as a "track"; as you have to gain your speed, perform the jump and then land whilst you stay inside the marked area, the track.
- This point isn't only for Long Jump on Track, but for the other events too: these are the names how riders call these events. Calling them anything else will be either confusing, weird or both. If we rename "Long Jump on Platform" to "Gap Jump" and "High Jump onto Platform" to "Platform Jump", I am sure we expect dozens of messages, emails and questions from the riders trying clarify which is which. I agree with Klaas that Platform Jump is especially confusing and isn't clear enough.
We updated the naming of the Jumps events in the last Rulebook Committee, and I think these names are quite appropriate, coherent, clear and good sounding; and in my opinion they exactly represent what each one is. I only see translation challenges with "Long Jump on Track", but I think it can easily be resolved by translating "track" as "course". At least it works properly in Hungarian.
Comment
> I think it can easily be resolved by translating "track" as "course". At least it works properly in Hungarian.
Dutch has no problem either. "Track" in general would be translated as "baan". Within sports, this would usually refer to an athletics track, but if we (Dutch) want to specifically refer to that, we can use the narrower word "atletiekbaan". Similar with train track etc.
I agree that calling the venue for High Jump on Track a "track" doesn't necessarily imply that it must be held on an athletics track. Although it might be good to mention that explicitly, to avoid misunderstanding. But maybe this is not needed, and regardless it is not the topic of this discussion.
Comment
Hello Mark and welcome! I'm a big fan of your work. :-)
Thank you for your perspective, from one of the great jumpers. The idea of this proposal was to give these events cooler names that were less clinical. I realize that communicating those across many languages might be a problem, so I'm staying open-minded. My thought was to keep the High Jump and Long Jump to just have their Olympic/Athletics, which are well known for what they involve. That might be the easier part. For the other two, I hoped to use the terminology of Trials riders to describe those important skills of Trials riding. Maybe we can find names that work, maybe not.
What if we keep the Olympic names, but add "(Track)" after them? Example: "High Jump and Long Jump (Track)". These events can be described as doing the unicycle version of those Olympic sports on unicycles. And of course, we have to land on our wheels, not our backs/backsides!
The bigger question is whether people can work with (and like) alternate names for the other two. If we can't find names that will translate well, I'll back off.
Suggestions for High Jump onto Platform:
- High Jump to Rubber
- Up to Rubber
- Highest Platform Jump
- Highest Jump to Ledge
- Jump to Ledge
Suggestions for Long Jump on Platform:
- Gap
- Gap Jump
- Gap Contest
- Longest Gap
- Longest Gap Jump
- Long Jump with Consequences?
Please offer suggestions of your own if you think this idea is worth pursuing.
Remember, names have meaning beyond simple utility. They can inspire, make something sound mysterious, or scary, or awesome. So that part of the idea here is to give them more attractive names. What do you think?
Comment
John, I see where you're coming from. But (also) outside Jumps, most unicycle disciplines have rather boring but quite clear names, such as "100m" or "Freestyle junior pairs". I have never noticed that people would want to make those names catchier. Therefore, I am not sure that there is a need to spice up the Jumps names in the first place.
If we still want to give it a try, we need to make sure that the new names don't create confusion, and have people asking what is what.
For now, I leave it at that. Fabian is at the heart of both the discipline and the pool of participants of Jumps. He can judge much better than you or me what would be good names or not. Of course, we then can still have our say. And knowing us, we will :-)
Comment
Hi John, thanks for the kind words :) I have seen you at a couple times at Unicons, but we never talked yet; let's have a chat next time! :)
Of course, that is totally fine to have a discussion about this (or any other idea), anyone can have their ideas heard and discussed, that is the point of the structure of the Rulebook Committee :)
Alright, I think I also understand your view better now. If I am not mistaken the main point here is to separate the athletic style jumps from the trials style jumps.
While I understand that this could be verified for historical / traditional reasons, I think every other aspect supports the naming system as it is at the moment.
Before we introduced the current naming system at the last Rulebook Committee we had names for the events somewhat similar to what you are suggesting - and those were not working well, that was the reason why we changed them in the first place. In my opinion to change the names in a direction like this would be a step back.
In the starting comment of the discussion you mentioned that "Long Jump on Track" can be misleading as the event is not always held on an athletic track. Following this thought, I think it would be a bad idea to add Track to the name of the "High Jump over Bar" event too, as it is not a necessary detail for this event, and therefore it could legit create confusion. I would rather remove track from "Long Jump on Track" (and find a word to replace Track) than adding it to "High Jump over Bar". In the other discussion about the discipline group of these events I will comment my view on whether or not these need to be held on an athletic track.
As I mentioned before, I do not think we can find better names for these events, as they say everything about the event very clearly - and nothing more; plus all competitors call them this way, which should also be respected in my opinion.
I am on the same page with Klaas that having a very clear and translatable name for the events is crucial. If anything, we do not want them mysterious I think :)
Comment
Thanks again to Mark for adding more perspective on how the Jumpers think of these things. Klaas is taking the longer view, and realizing it is more important for these events to have descriptive names then "cool" names. This should perhaps stay this way as our sport continues to develop. When the press comes to watch and report on us, they should have names that are easy to communicate as well.
Having learned that the current names for the newer/Urban jumps were changed to their current form is reason also to take a step back. I think I probably read about that at the time (Rulebook Committee) but forgot the details. So now, rather than rename the renames, maybe we can just smooth out the "categorization" of these events by removing "track".
But what to call them then? I don't think they need anything beyond their traditional names (High Jump, Long Jump), but some people will be unsure what they represent. What do you think of these?
- High Jump - Traditional / Long Jump - Traditional (boring)
- High Jump - Bar / Long Jump (better)
- High Jump - Platform (or Ledge) / Long Jump - Platform
I've shortened the names slightly, but believe they still contain enought information to tell them apart. If you've never seen them before, being curious is not a bad thing! You'll find out. High Jump doesn't need "Over" if Bar is there. For Long Jump, no additional description should be needed, but apparently many people aren't familiar with the traditional versions of those Track & Field events. "Long Jump On Platform" needs a change, as it suggests the whole thing is taking place on a platform. If so, what's the point? That's why I prefer "Long Jump To Platform", which is as long as I'd like to go for a name. You're jumping to a platform, not on one. If the Urban riders agree that "Gap" is not a great name for this event, I believe it.
Are those a little more viable? If you don't like any of them, I will probably drop this idea. These events don't need "marketing", they just need descriptive names that aren't cumbersome.
Comment
Oh I asked my question in the wrong Discussion, sorry for that.
I would like to leave the names as they are.
Comment
Klaas votes for no name changes on the jumps. Mark (and anyone else that's reading), any suggestions? I'll create a proposal (or not) based on your feedback.
Comment
As for me, I also think it is better the keep the current names.
I am considering these suggestions:
- High Jump - Bar / Long Jump
- High Jump - Platform (or Ledge) / Long Jump - Platform
But I think even the event is called for instance "High Jump - Bar" in spoken language everyone will be calling it High Jump over Bar, so we might as well keep them like this for accuracy reasons.
I don't think Gap Jump would be a great name for Long Jump on Platform. I think the current name is more descriptive, easier to translate and more coherent with the other names. I think we did have a discussion whether it should be "on" or "to", and I think the native speakers suggested that "on" works better as we are jumping from one set of platform onto another, so we remain on top of the platforms.
I think it was / is good to have this discussion and get to know other perspectives, history and tradition - even if in my opinion I like the names as they are :)
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I am posting this once (I mean, in one Discussion) in Jumps (and once in Track). I'll be on holiday for the next 1.5 weeks and have very limited time (if any) to devote to the Rulebook committee.
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I agree to not make a proposal to change names. But indeed thanks for bringing it up, John.