Stanford students are known for their skill on two wheels: By spring quarter, the typical freshman considers biking through the intersection of death — cell phone in one hand, coffee in the other — an easy task.

At the Frosh Talent Show, however, students in a packed Kresge Auditorium watched in awe as cyclist Ryan Woessner ‘10 took the stage. Woessner walked on the treads of a wheel’s tire; he spun circles with his entire body off to one side; and then he rode with only his hands.

But the best part? He did it all on one wheel.

Woessner’s unicycling performance took first place in the talent show. He walked away with the gold medal, full bragging rights and the respect of every cell-phone juggling cyclist in the room.

Woessner, who holds eight world titles in unicycling, stumbled across the sport in sixth grade. A friend began attending classes at a nearby gym and convinced him to come along. At first, Woessner remained deeply skeptical.

“I was like, ‘Um ... isn’t that a sport for circus clowns?’” said Woessner. “I went to a practice, though, and at my first one, I was able to get on the unicycle and ride across the gym.”

Woessner, who hails from Minnesota, learned to ride at Minnesota’s Twin Cities Unicycle Club, one of the largest and most prestigious unicycling clubs in the nation. Though there are several types of unicycling — including racing, mountain (“Muni”) and street — the Twin Cities club focuses exclusively on freestyle.

“I like to compare it to figure skating,” Woessner said. “It’s a four-minute routine choreographed to music, where you perform a series of tricks before judges.”

Competitors craft a routine around tricks that range from any of 10 skill levels. In order to achieve a certain skill level, cyclists must execute a number of difficult moves.

“For level one, you have to get on a unicycle by yourself, ride around the gym, and dismount gracefully with the seat in front,” said Woessner. “By level ten, you’re facing ten mounts of all different kinds of styles.”

Within one year, Woessner had passed the first eight levels of freestyle unicycling; after his second, he had completed all 10. At age 13, he was the youngest person to pass all levels in the International Unicycling Federation — and he had done it in record time.

“The quickest person before me — it took her over five years to pass,” admitted Woessner with a sheepish grin.

In 2000, at the world championships in Beijing, he won Junior Male Expert in freestyling. Entering the seventh grade, Woessner’s professional career was poised to begin — with puberty following close behind.

“The second year I was unicycling, I met a girl,” said Woessner.

Her name was Amy Shields, and she was a unicyclist, too. After meeting at a Twin Cities practice, the two decided to work on a freestyle routine together. The next year, they took home the World Artistic Pairs Junior Expert title.

Ultimately, the two became more than unicycling partners.

“Three years into it, we started to go out and date, and when we did, that was when our routine really started to take off,” Woessner said. “In 2004, we won our first [adult] pairs world title. The routine was flawless.”

This past summer — after racking up three more world titles — Woessner was elected a director of the Unicycling Society of America. But despite these achievements, he plans to put his unicycling career on hold while at Stanford.

“This summer, I’ll be helping out at club practices, working with people, seeing how their routines are coming together, giving them tips, and trying to teach them new skills,” said Woessner. “Also, I’ll be judging at the competitions. It’s a lot of fun just to watch what people can do.”

Still, the opportunity to perform for his peers was irresistible.

“I decided that I’d try out for the freshman talent show, so I put together a routine-kind of last minute,” said Woessner. “There was a lot of incredible talent, but I went out there, had a great routine and ended up coming away with the victory.”

A video of Ryan and Amy is online at http://www.unicyclist.org/cont/play.cfm?pi=m360288AmyRyan13.

Contact Marissa Miller at mrmiller@stanford.edu.