AUSTRALIA – Aussie wakeboarding champion, Josh Sanders, has claimed the world’s ‘longest rail’ at Nowra, on the NSW south coast. Starting with just a "crazy idea", Sanders and his father began to build a houseboat with provisions for a huge rail slider over the top of it. His sponsor, Red Bull, then joined in with funding to help put the ‘Houseboat Rail Project’ into action. At 36m in length, the Houseboat Rail, is the longest wakeboard rail built to date… and the first built over a houseboat: unless you know any better? MALAYSIA – The Youth and Sports Ministry is reviewing the National Sports Policy so that it continues to be relevant with current developments. When the original policy was put in place (1980’s) many sports did not exist or were not popular so were left out of the policy’s implementation. The policy review committee will study all new sports and those that had become popular to ensure the National Sports Policy does not leave them out – and that includes extreme sports. NORTH AMERICA – Extreme sports enthusiasts in Southeast Michigan will want to take note: the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour is making a one-night stop at Cranbrook on April 5. For over 20 years the Banff Mountain Film Festival has been showing some of the world’s best footage of extreme mountain sports and mountain subjects: the 2007/2008 Banff World Tour will take viewers from remote landscapes and cultures to close-up scenes of extreme mountain sports. OLYMPICS – The 2008 Olympic regatta windsurfing events to be held in August in Qingdao will be sailed on equipment supplied by the organiser. The RS:X ‘One shot’ hulls are made using production technology ensuring the tightest possible one design tolerances. These are far tighter than has been previously possible and have been developed to ensure the fairest possible competition in China. In testing to date ‘one shot’ hulls are neither faster nor slower than hulls already in the market place, but allow the hulls to be built to tighter tolerances so ensuring closest possible performance. All this assumes the Games go on, of course? Surfing
Marcos San Segundo (EUK) won the Goanna Pro this Easter weekend, the first event of the 2008 ASP European Pro Surf Tour. San Segundo, 19, who comes from Zarautz in the Basque Country, clinched his first ever ASP WQS title in stormy 1.2 to 1.5 meter waves. Surfing only four waves in the thirty-minute decider he took the four-men final ahead of Simon Marchand (FRA), Edgar Nozes (PRT) and Pablo Solar (ESP). SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Surfing Association in collaboration with Wavexperience.eu announces the first ever Swiss Surfing Week to take place in September in Vieux Bouceau on the Atlantic coast in France. With the Quiksilver Pro surfing contest in Hossegor also at the same time, and it being the best swell period of the year, this stretch of coast will be the Mecca of European surfers for a couple of weeks. So the Americas Cup is not enough for the Swiss??