To add a news article, you need to register/login.
GLRF United Kingdom membership surpassed 10 percent of the GLRF worldwide membership in mid-January.
GLRF United Kingdom membership, although focused mostly in London (58 members), has members in 7 other administrative areas: Southeast (11), East (7), West Midlands (4), East Midlands (4), North East (3), North West (2), and Yorkshire and the Humbert (2).
Since GLRF encourages active as well as inactive rowers to join, the All Oars Groups provide a wonderful way to connect those who are interested in meeting other rowers. With so much interest in rowing in England, it is only a matter of time before other groups develop, either for athlete communities, such as juniors or university, or for other regionally-focused areas such as Manchester, Birmingham, or Leeds. A small women’s group has formed in London, known as none other than London Women.
The ten percent milestone is important as GLRF strives to build an international membership that is not perceived as just a US community. GLRF United States membership has now shrunk to just 62% of the worldwide membership community as membership has grown in Canada, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. The end result is of course, a connected, worldwide community.
The GLRF Regatta Advisory Group has been cut from the GLRF lineup. Originally conceived as a way to provide consolidated GLRF membership inputs to gay-organized and gay-friendly regattas, the Advisory Group was met with limited use and fell into a comatose state in the last few years. A new Regatta Advisory Forum has been created on the ALL OARS message board to allow all GLRF members a chance to participate in regatta discussions, and to create topics individually.
The impetus for forming the original Regatta Advisory Group was the incredible but daunting week-long 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games Regatta that featured a 2k race format with heats and finals. Competitors found themselves stuck at the Bosbaan for most of the week as races were spread out to give athletes adequate rest. It was felt that an Advisory Group could provide inputs on future regatta formats to ensure rowers' interests were represented.
The Advisory Group was active during the 2006 Montreal World Outgames and the 2006 Chicago Gay Games, where the Group's input played a major role in shifting the Chicago venue from the Chicago River to Crystal Lake, and in shaping the format of the Montreal Outgames Regatta. However, with the growing community character of GLRF, it was felt that a forum format would provide a more representative voice for all GLRF members.
Currently, there are plans for gay regattas at the 2011 North American Outgames in Vancouver, the 2013 World Outgames in Antwerp, and possibly at the 2011 Asia Pacific Outgames in Wellington. There are also some discussions of organizing a regatta for the 2010 Frankfurt X-Mas Tournament.
Any member is welcome to create a topic in the new Regatta Advisory Forum where all GLRF members can post their comments and thoughts.
It’s official: Antwerp will host the 2013 World Outgames 03 – 11 Aug 2013. The Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association (GLISA), the international body that licenses the World Outgames, has announced Antwerp 2013 World Outgames agreement.pdf they have signed a definitive agreement with World Outgames Antwerpen to host the event. The organizers have said rowing will be one of the featured sports at the event.
The news follows months of speculation that the 2009 Copenhagen World Outgames might have been the last. Naysayers across world latched onto the small participant numbers at Copenhagen (~5500) and with barely disguised shadenfreude, unilaterally declared that the World Outgames had melted into a puddle. While it is true that the world economic crisis has made organizing and hosting any multi-sport event a challenge, the City of Copenhagen’s tourist arm, Wonderful Copenhagen, recently announced a positive financial result for the 2009 World Outgames.
GLRF is already in discussions with the sports organizers of the 2013 World Outgames on possible formats and locations for the rowing event. The initial proposal for the rowing event was on the Netekanaal, southeast of Wijnegim. The Royal Antwerp Rowing Club is located there and a regatta was hosted there in September 2009. The challenge for the location is the relative narrow width of the canal, and the small boat facilities. GLRF has proposed that the rowing event be held at Hazewinkel, a FISA certified world championship course 18km. south of Anvers (fr. Antwerp). With the expansive rowing facilities and a large water sports centre, managed by the Belgian Flemish Sports agency (Boso), the location would accommodate a large number of competitors for the 2013 World Outgames regatta
Those erg-crazy Danes have announced the 2009/2010 Winter Team Relay League. Each year the folks behind Concept2 Denmark organize this worldwide competition that encourages teams of 8 and 4 to compete in relay format on one Concept 2 Indoor Rower.
Get all the details at their website, 8GP .
What’s so great about this competition is that it allows inter-club squads to form, as in gay crews, or if those straight folk don’t mind being on "your team," they can join too. The essence of this fun competition is it only involves one erg, and can take place anywhere so you can combine some social fun at a gym, rowing club, or even your garage, den, dungeon, meatrack, whatever ….! (Do women have dungeons?)
Here are the quick and go details:
There are two separate events for teams of 8 and teams of 4 rowers. The tournament can take place anywhere. There is no need for teams to travel to a central location to compete, instead the teams simply race in their own clubs, gyms etc. and submit their results via this website.
The tournament consists of 5 rounds which take place each month from October to February. Each round has a different race format. A team doesn’t need to consist of exactly the same rowers in all rounds.
Enties for the Winter Team Relay League are free, and you can join at any point. All you need to do is register your team , a simple two minute process.
This kind of competition is perfect to bring the GLRF community together, and also to include other rowing club members in the fun. So log on and register your team and start putting some time on that erg because we can all be assured the Argo’s, the Strokes, Chicago Rowing Union, and … those hotties from Minneapolis Rowing Club will be in on the action. (If only Dima was on our [my] team ….)
Putting nationalistic politics aside, we have to cheer for the selection of Rio de Janeiro as the host of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Our GLRF Brasil members will be whooping and hollering since their rowing venue, Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, will be host to the rowing competition.
http://www.glrf.info/gotchagallery/data/media/41/lalagoaremo.jpg
Talk about picturesque! The venue is located right in the heart of the city and visitors will be able to watch the rowing races from a number of vantage points.
The other cities bidding for the Olympics were Tokyo, Madrid, and Chicago. No doubt our GLRF United States members in Chicago will be forlorn at their city’s site selection loss but we have to wonder about the proposed rowing venue on Lake Michigan. Critics had assailed the plan as windy and exposed. To cap it off, the venue was to be temporary. The entire breakwater placement was scheduled for removal after the Olympics. How does that benefit the local rowing community? Whatever happened to using Crystal Lake as the rowing venue? Sure it would have needed some major excavation but after the Olympics, the Chicago rowing community would have had a world class rowing facility. All of us in the gay and lesbian rowing community could have taken smug satisfaction that we led the groundbreaking path for an Olympic rowing venue when the 2006 Gay Games featured rowing at Crystal Lake.
Parabéns Brasil!
Q-Crew, the Toronto gay and lesbian rowing club that arose from the primordial ooze of Lake Ontario in 1997 to successfully compete at the 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games, and then melted into a sticky puddle on Church Street on a hot summer day in the 2000’s, left behind talented rowers, broken hearts, and many unresolved domain links on the web.
For years afterwards, the q-crew.com domain foundered in the hands of unscrupulous domain aggregators. These profiteers hoped to sell the domain for a premium and/or redirect gay-focused traffic to porn sites. To this day, the q-crew.com links continue to reside on Row2K, Rachel Quarrel’s Rowing Service, Outsports, Long Beach Rowing Association, and Gay Canada, among others.
Hoping to assist those searching the web for Canadian gay and lesbian rowing information, GLRF submitted a bid for the domain in 2005, before it’s annual renewal date. Unfortunately, the domain was consistently renewed and the GLRF minimum bid did nothing to attract the attention of the domain owners. The bid was forgotten and presumed defunct.
On 25 Jul 2009, after several practices on Lake Bagsvaerd, and in an Aliens dinner table moment, the GLRF Team was shocked to read an email domain purchase confirmation for q-crew.com Following the customary 60-day gestation, q-crew.com was transferred to the GLRF domain brood and now links to gay and lesbian rowing. Help support GLRF. Donate today. That domain bid cost US$60.00
Just watched the live telecast from the Gay Games website and yes, Cleveland was awarded the license to host the 2014 Gay Games. There will undoubtedly be much discussion about the winning bid but what does this mean for rowers? Like Boston, and Washington, Cleveland included rowing as one of the featured sports in their bid.
Check out the GLRF analysis of the three rowing proposals , discussed in the Boston Bee.
The GLRF worldwide community expanded to 28 countries when a rower from Cape Town registered today. His membership brings the first GLRF representation on the African continent. South Africa has a very active and competitive rowing community, complete with local boat builders and rowing programs in the Western region, around Johannesburg, and in the South East region. Although smaller in size than the Head of the Charles Regatta or the Royal Henley Regatta, the Buffalo Regatta, held every February is known worldwide for its competitive stature.
After several months of testing and tweaks, the GLRF internal social network, Network Now!, was officially unveiled in a soft launch to the GLRF Los Angeles and GLRF London area members. The service will be more widely announced at the end of September to ensure there are no hidden “bugs.”
Similar to other social networking services, Network Now! offers each member the ability to update his/her own activity stream through manual updates or from a direct link to a person’s Twitter account. Members can also ‘friend’ others. What differentiates Network Now! is that all personal profiles are limited to gender, geographic location, and rowing skills so that members can be assured of a continued level of privacy. GLRF OnlineID’s are the only visible form of identification unless a member wants to upload a personal picture. Photo and video sharing options from Flickr and YouTube provide great added rowing features. One of the nice features of the video sharing is that the videos are automatically embedded in the page so web surfing is minimized.
However, the real strength of Network Now! shines as a community building tool. Since most rowers belong to a variety of clubs in a given area or region, Network Now! provides a perfect medium to connect rowers at a social and community level. However, the regional group possibilities are just one option. With Network Now!, any member can form any group for any focus or interest. Collegiate rowers can form groups based on competitive conferences, and coaches can form groups based on rowing skills: juniors, collegiate, masters, and elite. Rowing areas of interest can form groups: open water, masters, and adaptive are just some of the possibilities. Groups can serve to coordinate events and regatta participation.
Groups have three levels of access, depending on the amount of desired GLRF membership interaction: public, invitation-only, and private. In keeping with the GLRF individual membership structure, every member can set his/her desired level of interaction with groups and other members through an extensive menu of notification settings, thereby minimizing excessive email updates.
GLRF members are encouraged to click on the Network Now! navigation button and join a group, or create your own.
------
Update 18 May 2011: The Network Now! group component was replaced by the All Oars Groups, an application of the All Oars Network. The new groups feature offers greater flexibility and connectivity for the GLRF community. Read the blog entry on the GLRF Maintenance Log.
GLRF international membership continued its march towards the 1,000 mark with registration number 800 coming from a Dublin university graduate who had recently returned to London.
In the past two months, GLRF recorded 28 registrations from 7 countries with UK registrations accounting for just under 30% of the total new membership. At the current rate, GLRF may need to relocate to a posh office along the lower Thames.
