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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In this week's edition of Extreme Exposure\u2014a weekly column featuring news and photography from the world of action and outdoor sports\u2014Vail Resorts buys Whistler Blackomb.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential Pitfalls of Surfing, Skating and Climbing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As athletes get down to business this week at the Summer Olympics in Rio, officials from several non-traditional sports received word that their pursuits had been voted in by the IOC for Olympic inclusion in Japan for the 2020 Games. Surfing, skateboarding and climbing all made the cut. Inclusion in the world\u2019s biggest sporting event can have positive effects like better exposure for athletes, bigger sponsorship packages thanks to that exposure and better understanding of these often-obscure sports. But it can also have negative impacts, like a splitting of the sports between the core and the formatted version that appears in the Olympics, as Finnish pro snowboarder Antti Autti wrote last week.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And then there are the venues. While skating and climbing have controlled venues where officials can essentially manicure the playing field, surfing has to deal with the whims of Mother Nature, which proved problematic when surfing was included in X Games competition years ago. For the sport to look its best, the World Surf League uses nearly month-long windows to make a call on an event to utilize the best swell opportunities. In a controlled two-week event like the Olympics, the flexibility just isn\u2019t there so surfers are forced to deal with conditions on hand, which as we\u2019ve seen with events like the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif., doesn\u2019t always play out the best for the sport\u2019s aesthetic. One solution would be a wave pool, as Kelly Slater suggested in an interview with Graham Bensinger in March. &amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;\u201C&lt;/strong&gt;I think a wave pool in Japan makes a lot of sense,\u201D he said. \u201CYou can have exact start times and you know how to control your field. It would be really interesting if a wave pool was a way to display surfing the first time in the Olympics.\u201D &amp;nbsp;Right now, the event is scheduled to be held at Shidashita Beach in Chiba, Japan, selected by the International Surfing Association because of its statistical likelihood to pull in Typhoon swell during the Olympic schedule between July 24 and August 9. By the way, Slater, who\u2019ll be 48 in 2020, also said he\u2019d be up for competing in the games if selected.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;@gabrielmedina and ISA President @fernandoaguerre rejoice after the IOC voted to include Surfing as an Olympic Sport! #Olympics #Tokyo2020 #SurfsUp\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A photo posted by ISA (@isasurfing) on Aug 3, 2016 at 1:12pm PDT\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the Real Climbing World, Van Life Is The Reality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since climbing made the Olympic cut, hopefully NBC producers come up with some vignettes like this to show the reality of the sport during the 2020 broadcast. Most core climbers are living out of the backs of trucks and beat up cars so they can be on rock every waking moment. And if they\u2019re really lucky, they\u2019re living in kitted-out vans like world-class climber Alex Honnold. \u201CI\u2019ve never been particularly motivated to live in a car,\u201D he says. \u201C(And) it\u2019s not that I love van living, but I love climbing and the van is the most comfortable way to climb all the time.\u201D The true reality of the sport.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surfing Behind a Hot Air Balloon&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I gotta admit, the stunts in the realm of action and outdoor sports just keep getting weirder. Like when Carsten Kurmis recently swapped out his kite in his kite-surfing for a hot air balloon, which he used to traverse the waters of Lake Tegernsee in the Bavaria region of Germany. And while the stunt is slightly bizarre, it sure made for good visuals.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vail Resorts to Buy Whistler-Blackomb&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a statement released today, Vail Resorts announced that it will purchase Whistler Blackomb for $1.04 billion. Whistler Blackomb\u2019s CEO Dave Brownlie said the move comes as the resort has been \u201Cmonitoring the unique challenges facing the broader ski industry due to the unpredictability of year-to-year regional weather patterns,\u201D and that the purchase by Vail secures the resort\u2019s future. One member of the Whistler Blackomb board will&amp;nbsp;reportedly serve on the Vail Resorts board moving forward.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/edge/2016/08/08/olympics-japan-2020-extreme-sports-skating-surfing-climbing>