CANADA – Vancouver, B.C. is a great place to go on holiday if you’re a skateboarder. This city offers top quality skateparks, it’s the home to the X Games Trials of Canada and it has great local board shops. One of the best skateparks is Vancouver Downtown Skateboard Plaza. It looks like a Downtown office plaza, but inside there is about 26,000 square feet of terrain and features to skate – rails, curbs, ramps, open space, embankments, walls and steps. And for bowel boarding try the Hastings Skatepark, reknown for having the best skateboarding bowels in the world with depths of 1, 2 and 3 meters as well as a halfpipe, hips, snake run and spines. UK – talking of skateboarding, don’t forget the Skate-o-Rama music and skateboard event takes place this Saturday, 5th July, at Wellholme Park, Brighouse. Comps to enter, prizes to win, and demos of other urban sports to watch and try…… see the photo gallery ; more info here . {mosimage} OLYMPICS POLLUTION – many of the mountain-bikers got their first taste of the air around Beijing at last year’s test event and were not impressed. One American rider dropped out of the race, saying the pollution resulted in him “coughing, hacking, spitting up all sorts of gross stuff and feeling nauseous.” Another Canadian said you can adapt to the heat but “there is no acclamation to pollution.” The Canadian team will use air filters in their rooms and masks while training. To battle the heat, riders will don ice vests to cool their body temperatures before their events and will race dressed in light-weight, breathable clothing. Some Olympic athletes plan to train in countries near China prior to the Games. FRANCE – C’EST LES SOLDES! La marque OLOW avec ses tee-shirts décalés fait sa vente privée, c’est maintenant sur Private Surfshop! Private Surfshop is offering OLOW T-shirts in the latest private sale: 1-7 July. Check out Private-Surfshop . {mosimage} CYCLING – ok, so it’s not really considered an extreme sport but the Tour de France starts this weekend and it’s pretty extreme in many ways – I’ve run & cycled a couple of the hills they eat up during the Tour and, boy, they’re killers… Surfing Want to win a custom built surfboard? Get your entries in to win your brand new “Gold Coast Surfboards ” surfboard, custom made for this competition – the surfboard will be delivered to the winner, anywhere in the world. Basque surfer Aritz Aranburu, 2008 ASP World Tour rookie and defending ASP European Pro Surf Tour champion, announced on Sunday he was pulling out from the next World Tour event, the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay as he had twisted his ankle again, so his plan was to keep up the rehabilitation program. Aranburu has had a tough start though this year and is trying to catch up with his fellow ASP Top 45 contenders after three months of rehabilitation due to a broken meniscus and a twisted ankle. At 22, Aranburu has been on the rise for the past two years and is now a member of the Elite Top 45 surfers of the 2008 ASP World Tour. DURBAN, RSA – crisp, one metre waves drained across the New Pier sand bank on day 2 of the 6-Star ASP World Qualifying Series Mr Price Pro, offering male contestants unsullied left and right-hand canvasses for some of the top scoring rides of the event so far. Leading the charge was prolific Australian free surfer Yadin Nicol, a rookie on the WQS, who outclassed his fellow seeded surfers on the Round of 144 stage. Nicol posted 9.33 and 9.00 rides for his series of explosive snaps earning the highest heat total of the event so far.