ITALY – 28 competitions are happening in the FIS Grand Finals this end of week: Alpine Skiing, Cross Country skiing, Freestyle and Snowboard events. 429 athletes are signed up to take part in the Freestyle and Snowboard events in Valmalenco. On Saturday night, after the award ceremony, there’s going to be a mega-party, The Match Music Globes Party, at the Pentagono in Bornio. UK – Tyneside, in North East England becoming a surfing mecca?? Indeed… bad weather (wet, grey, windy being the norm) is no obstacle for the surfers in their top quality wetsuits. In fact, the local Council admits that surfing and extreme sports are very important to the coastal economy, to the point that they will be organising an extreme sports weekend in October. USA – No Fear is to sponsor a new grassroots, coast-to-coast wakeboarding competition series, called the "Wake 2 Wake Tour”, to help grow the sport and support budding athletes. The inaugural competition series will consist of four World Wakeboard Association (WWA) sanctioned events in Southern California, Texas, Kansas and Florida. Each W2W Tour event will comply with WWA rules and standards, with four age divisions for boys and girls aged five and up, as well as Open Men’s and Open Women’s divisions. Surfing The 2008 European Pro Surf Tour starts next week with the Goanna Pro Tapia at Tapia de Casariego, on the North coast of Spain, in the Asturies region from March 20 to 22. It’s one of the oldest events in Europe in the expected cold and demanding conditions usually on offer at this time of the year in Tapia. European surfing is on a high with four of the 45 pros on the ASP World Tour; so the 2008 European Pro Surf Tour is an excellent showcase for the best of the Old Continent. In April the tour continues in La Sauzaie, France, and Thurso, Scotland. Local surfing communities have twice been beaten back Rip Curl as they attempt to find a location in Australia or New Zealand for the Rip Curl SEARCH Men’s WCT event. The first try was to get the legendary wave at Gnaraloo station in Western Australia but the “Save Gnaraloo” petition secured thousands of signatures to stop proceedings. Rip Curl then eyed the epic lefthanders of Raglan in New Zealand as a great venue, both scenically and competitively pending a swell for the world’s Top 45 surfers, but again the local surfing community protested citing indigenous Maori sacred land as the primary cause of concern.