Malfunction Longboard Champs Named

For the second year running Dane Pioli, 24, has won the prestigious Surftech Men’s Professional final. Australian longboard champion, Harley Ingleby, finished 2nd. The former world surfing champion Josh Constable came in 3rd and Delmaney Points Ray Lawrence in 4th.

The blue ribbon event of the 2008 Hyundai Malfunction Surfing Festival was so close that only decimal points separated 1st to 3rd at Main Beach, Kingscliff.



Josh Constable got off to an early lead with 7.5 on his first ride and quickly backed that up with a 5.83 to extend his lead.

Harley Ingleby managed to overtake Josh whilst coming up to the half way mark with 6.17 for his first ride and then posted a 6.93 just before the half way make to take him into the lead. As he did last year, Dane Pioli waited patiently and, with 10 minutes to go, overtook his high profile rivals with an excellent 8 point ride.

While Josh and Harley struggled to beat their scores, Pioli finished off with a 6 point ride to win his second title in a row.

Kickflip Record Broken - By 13-Year-Old

The consecutive kickflip record was broken at the beginning of this month - by a boy of 13.

The record was broken by Zach Kral from Waterford, Wisconsin, USA. He made 1200 consecutive kickflips in the space of 1 hour and 42 minutes at the Fuze Kickflip Challenge at 4Seasons Skatepark in Milwaukee.

Zach began getting tired when reaching kickflip number 1160, but decided to go on and round the result to 1200 kickflips, before quitting.

Zach broke the previous record of 566, which was set and held by Dutch skater Laurens Groenveld.

Burton New Zealand Open

The Burton New Zealand Open Snowboarding Championships returns this year from July 29 to August 2, at Snow Park NZ in Lake Wanaka, welcoming back the world's top snowboarders.

The Burton NZ Open is the pinnacle of snowboarding competition in the Southern Hemisphere. It brings together some of the world's top professional riders including X Games champions, Olympic gold medallists and world champions. All of them are competing for one thing - the largest title payout in snowboarding.



The male and female cumulative-points champions will each collect $100,000 USD after competing in the New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and USA events. New Zealand being the first of the six international events.

Spectators will be able to watch all the action for free from a specially created grandstand carved out of snow.

The action begins on Wednesday July 30 with the men's and women's halfpipe qualifiers. Then, on Thursday July 31, the action moves to Snow Park NZ's newly designed slopestyle course for the qualifiers. Afterwards, the Slopestyle Semi-finals and Finals will take place on Friday August 1.

Navy MX World Championships Begin

The Navy Moto X World Championships had its first of the two days competition on Sunday with Best Trick, SuperMoto and Speed & Style just some of the medals decided.

Scott Murray stuck a near flawless double backflip, good enough for the gold medal and a score of 95.08. Although, all the buzz had been around Kyle Loza and his new trick, Electric Death (as featured on Mongers Blog), but after two unsuccessful attempts at pulling it off, Loza couldn't even scrape his way into the top three.

"Everybody was bringing such big tricks. The double backflip is two years old now, so I wanted to show everyone that I could do it. I first landed it on dirt in November 2007 and today was the second. I'm happy to have it over with." - Scott Murray

Thomas Pages of France took home the silver with a score of 92.60. In third it was American Todd Potte with a 91.80.

Mark Burkhart continued to dominate SuperMoto, Moving from ninth to end up taking the gold.

Air Race Season Begins

Paul Bonhomme, of Britain, put on a magnificent display of flying in qualifying on Thursday. He's now secured pole position in the first race of the 2008 Red Bull Air Race World Series which takes place in Abu Dhabi today, Friday 11th April.

After losing last year’s championship by just fractions of a second, Bonhomme completely outclassed the rest of the field of the world’s top pilots at the outset of the fourth season of the race, winning the qualifying in a time of 1:03.95.



Bonhomme’s winning time on the windswept course just metres above the turquoise waters of the Arabian Gulf was 3.30 seconds faster than second place Kirby Chambliss of the United States. Defending champion Mike Mangold took third in Thursday’s qualifying. He was 3.84 seconds behind Bonhomme.

Shark halts competition at Drug Aware Pro

At the infamous Southside break, Margaret River, Western Australia, a shark sighting by a competitor has derailed the third day of competition at the Drug Aware Pro Margaret River presented by O’Neill.

It was Amee Donohoe who saw the shark as she was paddling back out to the line-up after catching a wave in the ninth heat of the morning’s action. Currently rated fourth in the world, she was also leading the heat at the time, when she saw what she described as a "massive fin and a wide girth" and quickly made her way back in.

"I was paddling back out through the channel and saw this massive fin, it was really wide. I got a pretty good look at it - good enough to not want to stay in the water."

Donohoe alerted her fellow competitors and event organisers, bringing a swift end to the competition.


Locals have reported a spate of shark sightings in recent weeks.

Based upon ASP rules, the heat will be re-started and all scores will still remain. Also, as a matter of safety, jet skis will patrol the competition area to keep the situation under control and provide the surfers with a hasty escape from the water if needed.

Save Southbank

Laying underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall the area in London's Southbank, known as Undercroft, has served as London's premier skating spot for almost 40 years. However, commercial development is now threatening to make it a thing of the past.

The Undercroft has been bringing young people from various backgrounds together for over 35 years but now it's planned to turn the area into shops and restaurants - Just like the rest of London.



Skaters have put together a documentary on the architectural history of the space, it's cultural legacy, and the value of the area as it exists now. You can check it out here.

If you'd like to help keep the space alive you can sign this petition, set up on the Government's website, here. In order to sign the petition you must be a British citizen.

Air Race 08 - Behind the Action

The Red Bull Air Race 2008 is to commence from the 10th of April. But what is behind such an action packed event?

The Air Race requires the use of 380 tonnes of equipment which needs to be transported to 10 different location across the globe.

"The Red Bull Air Race may be a major sporting and physical challenge for the pilots, but it is also a huge challenge for the Red Bull Air Race logistics team..."

The immense infrastructure that is packed up and transported to the events across the globe includes the Grid Stand which is the tower at the temporary runway. Also included is the High Flyer's Lounge for hospitality guests, the hangars for the racing aircrafts, the portable barges that the Air Gate pylons are built upon, the electronics equipment, kitchens, catering equipment, a mobile broadcasting centre where the TV programme is produced and much more.

To make sure that the infrastructure can be moved around the world in time for races in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Australia, there is even a second set of equipment consisting of all these elements and more.



Transporting this huge amount of equipment is either done by sea or by air. In most cases, a combination of the two. When transporting by air, the team use 2 Boeing 747 cargo planes filled to the max, whilst transporting by sea takes up to 40 containers.

Three whole days are required to dismantle the entire race infrastructure from the moment that last aircraft touches down at the temporary runway created solely for the event. Depending on means of transport that the team choose, the material can be travelling several weeks to the next location.

“Shifting 380 tons from one continent to another is a big challenge for the whole logistics crew, but our motivation is seeing the pilots competing in jaw-dropping races and crowds cheering on them when everything is up and in place"

Kevin Griffin wins QS Showdown

Grouse Mountain welcomed big crowds and the best professional and amateur Canadian riders this past weekend for the Swatch TTR 3-Star Quiksilver Showdown Over the City.

Prizes totaling upto $20,000 CDN and 550 TTR ranking points were 'up for grabs'. Claiming the Men's Title was Canadian Kevin Griffin. In second and thrid respectively was Matt Belzile and Charles Reid. Coming in first and claiming the women's first place was Terri Dreger, followed by Robin Van Gyn in second, and Stephanie Just in third.

Skiing = Therapy

Skiing is being used as a therapy for young cancer patients in Spain. Fifty patients aged between 9-13 left for a few days holiday at the Formigal ski resort in Huesca province, Spain, as part of a charity funded project.



The brave youngsters from Oncology Units across the country left Zaragoza by coach to have skiing lessons with national ski school instructors.

During their short break the children also got to meet the huskie sleigh dogs and see the whole resort on the back of snowmobiles.

After a second morning out on the slopes with the instructors, and overall a great break, the children left the resort.

Swanepoel misses the start of the MX2 season

Due to undergo a wrist operation on Wednesday, April 2, Molson Kawasaki’s South African superstar Gareth Swanepoel is confirmed to miss the start of the MX2 Season.

The 23 year-old made the decision to get his wrist fixed and miss the start of the MX2 World motocross championship after struggling through the pre-season races due to pains in it.

The initial injury in his wrist has been a problem for Gareth since early in the 2006 season when he originally broke the bone in his right wrist. After late bone graft surgery during late season ’07 it was hoped that the small bone would heal properly with the aid of a small screw. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and a recent exploratory examination proved that the surgery had not been completely successful and the bone had still not healed properly as hoped.

This time a vascularised bone graft will be carried out. Afterwards, it's expected that his arm will be plastered to above the elbow. The whole treatment should take around 4 months.