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Each Olympic cycle brings media attention to a select few ‘celebrity’ Olympic athletes while many others may be left standing in the shadows thinking “so what, I’m just chopped liver?” In the current 2024 Olympic Games, a few rowers are getting an outsized attention because they are “out.” There are other media articles extolling the huge number of out athletes in the 2024 cycle. Even more articles suggest that one “out” athlete on the team was responsible for bringing home gold for his/her team. Presumably, we should give those athletes more recognition and admiration. Hmmm, we are confused. If it is a team event, doesn’t that require the participation and talent of all the team members?
The reality is that every rower who is at the 2024 Olympics deserves our utmost respect and admiration for the huge personal sacrifice he/she has made in their career, in their personal lives, in their ability to achieve homeownership, and in their financial and savings goals. We haven’t even discussed the hours and hours of training and physical preparation, and just as important, the mental toll it takes on every athlete to keep going day in and day out, especially when it doesn’t seem like they are making much progress in their skill or their erg or race times.
From the perspective of the rowing community, every rower has had to be on the water two or three times a day for months, and that isn’t in beautiful cool weather with mirror like water. Then there are the brutal erg sessions that leave you heaving on the floor, and then there’s the weight room. We can’t begin to scratch the surface at what is involved in training for Olympic selection and then afterwards, the intense final stretch in preparation for the Olympics.
For the 2024 Olympics, rowing has entries from 65 countries and one AIN. The total number of entries, male and female, comes to 492. That number doesn’t take into account the team alternates that some countries can afford (in manpower and cost). These alternates have had to train just as hard and even more difficult, they have to watch on the sidelines while their teammates are in the boats.
In the 1990’s, a common statistical measure was that ten percent of the population is gay. Now, new demographic statistical data indicates that 1.2 to 6.8 percent of the population is LGBTQ. It is our perception that the percent of LGBTQ athletes in rowing is much higher, closer to 15 percent. Why? Rowing is a non-contact sport where everyone sits in a separate seat but works as a team to add speed to the boat. This makes an attractive setting for an LGBTQ youth or adult who perhaps feels more comfortable competing in isolation.
If you add a comfortable and conservative estimate of 20 alternate athletes, the total number of rowers at the 2024 Olympics comes to 512. If only 5 percent of those athletes are LGBTQ, that comes to 26, rounding up. At 10 percent, the number is 51, rounding down. At 15 percent, the number is 77, rounding up.
There can be many reasons why an athlete does not want to reveal their sexual orientation. Some don’t think it is important, others may face team expulsion or harassment or isolation (even in 2024), some may worry about their employment prospects (either in the rowing community or in the corporate world), and then there are those whose private lives and family issues make it better to keep it hidden.
The LGBTQ media is heralding the nine out rowers at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Let’s make sure the all the other LGBTQ rowers get just as much admiration and respect. We are sure that even though it never made headlines, 2024 is not the first time an LGBTQ rower has medaled at the Olympics. While you’re doling out the respect and admiration to the Olympic rowers, let’s do so for all of them. After all, they are our teammates!
The Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation (GLRF) is proud to announce the 2024 Rainbow Logo Challenge. Rowing national governing bodies, rowing clubs and programmes, and rowing-related businesses worldwide are challenged to update their website logo and social media logo with rainbow colors or create a special rainbow logo for the month of June.
The Rainbow Logo Challenge coincides with the month of June, globally recognized as International Pride Month. It is a time when the LGBTQ+ community celebrates their diversity and pride in who they are.
The impact of incorporating rainbow colors in an organization’s website logo and social media logo cannot be underestimated. Featuring rainbow colors in a logo instantly conveys a sense of reassurance and welcoming acceptance from a business or organization.
The Challenge, now in its fourth year, continues to gain traction as the broader rowing community recognizes the importance of openly supporting their LGBTQ+ staff, members, and customers. GLRF will recognize all organizations that display a rainbow logo by featuring the organizations and their logos.
We call on the broader rowing community to take up the challenge and encourage others to share in the core values of inclusion and acceptance. This isn’t politics; it is an affirmation.
While we are on the lookout online to spot rainbow logos, we can’t discover them all. Help us recognize any rowing-related organizations that participate by dropping us an email: rowing@glrf.info
The Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation (GLRF) is proud to announce the 2023 Rainbow Logo Challenge. Rowing national governing bodies, rowing clubs and programmes and rowing-related businesses are challenged to add rainbow colors to their social media and website logos for the month of June.
June is recognized worldwide as International Pride month, a time when the LGBTQ+ community celebrates their diversity and affirms their pride in who they are.
The Challenge is important because of the impact social media has within the rowing community. Every social view showcases a rowing organization’s support for and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ rowing community. When an individual sees a rainbow flag or an image with rainbow colors, he/she/they instantly feel a sense of reassurance and welcome in that place of business or organization.
The Challenge, now in its third year, continues to gain momentum within the rowing community. Previous national governing bodies participation include USRowing, Rowing Canada, Rowing New Zealand and British Rowing. Rowing programmes who have participated include Community Rowing, North Shore Maritime, Chicago Rowing Union, Tacoma Rowing, Top Row, and Marin Rowing Association. Rowing retailers that have participated include JL Racing, Ride Backwards, and Row Source. Media participation included behemoth Rowing News as well online social voices We Row Like This, Steady State Network, and Gay Ergos.
Although the Challenge runs for the month of June, the lasting effect to the LGBTQ+ rowing community remains throughout the year. The act of participating in the Challenge serves to reassure governing body staff members, coaches, umpires, coxies, and rowers that their careers and their race seats are not in jeopardy if they reveal their sexual orientation. An organization’s participation also serves to send a message to other rowing community organizations that inclusion and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ rowing community is an important core value.
Participation in the Challenge involves changing an organization’s website logo as well as all social media logos to incorporate several rainbow colors, or the creation of a special rainbow logo for the month of June. The Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation will recognize all Challenge participants by featuring their rainbow logo on their 2023 Rainbow Logo Challenge Tumblr page as well as on GLRF social media accounts. Let us know if you accepted the challenge: rowing@glrf.info
The Challenge
The 2022 Rainbow Logo Challenge is a month-long community celebration of the global LGBTQ+ community. Sponsored by the Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation (GLRF), the Challenge is an opportunity for rowing clubs, programmes, governing bodies, and related businesses to openly show their support for LGBTQ+ rowers, coaches, staff, and volunteers by incorporating rainbow colors in their social media and website logos.
The Challenge runs for the entire month of June so organizations can jump onboard at any time during the month.
The Impact
June is Pride month around the world, a time when the LGBTQ+ community celebrates their diversity and affirms their pride in who they are. When an organization displays a rainbow flag or rainbow symbol such as a logo, it is sending a message of inclusion and acceptance. For someone in the LGBTQ+ community, seeing a rainbow flag or image with rainbow colors instantly conveys a feeling of reassurance that they are welcome in that place of business or that organization.
The Challenge is important because of the impact social media has on the rowing community. Every social view, be it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, a blog, or a website, that showcases a rainbow infused logo, tells the site visitor that the organization values and supports the LGBTQ+ community.
The Cultural Value
The importance of the Challenge reaches far beyond its impact during June pride month. The display of a rainbow logo during Pride month sends a message that LGBTQ+ members are warmly welcome throughout the year in a team, programme, club, or organization, and that their careers and their race seats are not in jeopardy if they reveal their orientation at some point in the future.
Displaying a rainbow logo can reassure someone in the rowing community who is reticent about sharing this big part of their private lives publicly and that they can feel comfortable in doing so. The logo also sends a broader organizational message to everyone in the club or programme that warmly welcoming the LGBTQ+ community is an important cultural value.
The Origins
The history of the Rainbow Logo Challenge dates to the June 2019 USRowing Junior National Championships at Nathan Benderson Park, in Florida - United States. On Thursday, 06 June 2019, the then USRowing Executive Director Patrick McNerney walked over to the Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation booth to learn more about The Rower’s Pledge. While talking with GLRF Executive Director Brian Todd, Patrick asked how USRowing could do more to support the LGBTQ+ community. The reply was instantaneous: change your logo to a rainbow logo for June Pride month. Patrick was momentarily stunned and incredulous: “Really? That’s important? Brian’s reply was quick: “oh yeah, you have no idea how important that is to the community.” Whereupon Patrick turned to his communication staff and directed them to change the USRowing logo by 5 pm that day. It was done by 2 pm.
After that stunning sudden change by USRowing, the idea of a Rainbow Logo Challenge emerged. GLRF issued the first Rainbow Logo Challenge on 11 June 2019. The challenge went out by Twitter and Facebook posts but it got little notice. A few organization’s jumped onboard (JL Racing for one). GLRF called Rowing Canada to give them a heads up in case their members might be calling in. Their logo went up a few days later and it was spectacular. The logo challenge stayed dormant in 2020 and 2021 as the restrictions and challenges of the Covid 19 pandemic shut down most of the rowing community.
How To Participate
The crux of the Rainbow Logo Challenge is to change your organization logo to incorporate several if not all of the LGBTQ+ rainbow colors (started as 8 then commonly displayed as 6 and now 8 again). A big part of the Challenge is to feature the rainbow logo on all of an organization’s social media feeds as well as it’s website. It is understood that some websites can’t instantly or easily change their logo, like a social media feed, because of how the website logo is coded into the header. The workaround for that is to feature a rainbow image on the home page. The final part of the challenge is to display the rainbow logos for the entire month of June.
Is there an award for the challenge, gold, silver, or bronze, since the rowing community is so ultra-competitive? No. This is a self-challenge. Beyond the logos, perhaps some organizations may find inventive ways to celebrate and highlight LGBTQ+ visibility, diversity, and inclusiveness. Share those displays or events or gestures with GLRF and we will mention those, and of course, we will be eager to see each and every rainbow logo you send to: rowing@glrf.info. We also have a Rainbow Logo Challenge on Tumblr - see link in green announcement banner at top of the page.
Gay and Lesbian rowers are involved in the entire spectrum of clubs and boathouses. Most of us row in clubs and boathouses without any specific affiliation or sexual orientation.
Some rowers have formed a specific club (with their own equipment) and row out of a common boathouse. That isn’t very unusual. A lot of boathouses have several tenant clubs with their own equipment. A good example is the DC Strokes Club. They row out of the Anacostia Boathouse.
Another type of club is one that pays fees to use the boathouse equipment. Still another example is a club that rows exclusively among themselves but all the members belong to the overall rowing club.
With some clubs, the rowers belong to the overall boathouse and have a social sub-club that puts together a boat for regattas and creates a basis for a social “community.” In Boston and Berlin, gay and lesbian rowers have formed what can best be described as regional groups, that provide an umbrella organization for all rowers that belong to various clubs in the metropolitan area.
Finally, there are the scullers who store their boats in the boathouse and row without a second thought to anyone or anything.
The bottom line is that we are there to row.
Why do gays and lesbians need a gay club? Just basic human needs - community, safety, sense of belonging, acceptance, things that never cross the mind of straight people.
GLRF offers unlimited opportunities to build community and connect with other rowers and members of the rowing community. Our internal social network features a robust group feature called, All Oars Groups.
Groups are great for creating community amongst a number of rowing clubs in a large city, for connecting athletes like juniors, university crews, or adaptive rowers, for regattas, and even for lgbt communities, boats, or squads in a large rowing club.
You can also use the All Oars Groups feature to create a virtual rowing club. With news, a forum, and messaging, you have almost everything you need to get up and running, and at zero cost. Yes, any GLRF member can create a group for free.
Any member can create their own group or join an existing group, depending on the level of privacy. Every group offers these key features to help connect members;
Self service group creation and administration
Staff levels: owner, administrators, and moderators
Three levels of privacy: public, private, and hidden
Individualized subdomains for listing on Facebook, gay and lesbian directories, and external websites
Group customization, featuring personalized banners and logos
Invite capability
Mass messaging to all group members
A dedicated forum that can have its own level of visibility to members and/or guests
‘Like’ topic notification
Ability to add links from the GLRF Share A Link list
A wall for quick posts
Image gallery for sharing images and videos
Group calendar features
RSS feeds for each group, including separate feeds for news articles and forum topics
Categories for quick search in a group directory
Take a look at the current group listing.
The gay and lesbian sports community has been bombarded by requests from media production companies for LGBT athletes and sports teams interested in being on camera for a TV show, a movie, or a documentary series.
Promoting your club or your team can be a great way to spread the word about rowing in the community and to develop new rowers. Your club may embrace the project with open arms or they may direct that the filming only focus on the rowers involved.
The key thing to understand is that the entertainment business is all about projects, pitches, and audience appeal. Those with the money, namely studios and networks, are inundated with pitches from production companies on a new idea or storyline. Conversely, a network may put out the word that they are looking for gay sports stories. Either way, the stories inevitably involve conflict, drama, and adversity. Keep that in mind from a club perspective. The publicity you garner may not always be favorable. Your focus may be rowing. Their focus is typically on the human drama element.
Normally, the studios and networks do not actually make the movie or documentary. They hire an independent production company, and there are more of them than all the Starbucks outlets combined. To be “greenlighted” as they say in the industry, a production company either has to have content (which the production company initially funds and tries to sell) or they have to have people “tied” to a project in order to get it funded.
So when you receive an email that says:
“XYZ - the new LGBT network from MEMEME Networks is looking for LGBT athletes blah blah blah,....Are you:
trying to create your own LGBT team?
already part of a competitive sports league?
about to try your hand at a new sport?
playing on a team with your partner or an ex-lover?
competing against your partner in a sport?
training for some 20xx event?
Remember that this is one of many production companies looking for people and organizations to help sell their project. All they care about is getting their project funded because then they become the “hot ticket” in the biz by name dropping their project as being “picked up” by XYZ network. So a word of warning. They may initially say yes, we want to film you, and then if the project is picked up, you, your team, or your club may be cut based on budgets, the studios, or the production company. Universally, a club or a team will not get any money for the project.
You may hope to show the boat rowing, coming together, training for a regatta, whatever the initial idea. They may cut out major parts of the filming to focus on hot bods, beautiful faces, fights, or most of all, disappointment and failure. The real story and what they show can be two very different things.
Finally, after all is said and done, and after you, your boat, your team, or your club has put enormous amounts of time and effort to help the production company with the documentary or reality series, they may decide to shelve the deal, or delay its screening. Or even worse, schedule the screening for some nonprime time slot that serves only as filler, like a Saturday morning.
We’re not saying you shouldn’t go for the chance to promote rowing but do it with your eyes wide open.
Oh yeah, let’s do lunch. Call me. Love ya!
Reprinted with permission from Rowing News for the convenience of our website visitors. Rowing News Issue Number 8, September 2005. Copyright 2005 by Ben Storey, MD. All rights reserved.
In a country where same-sex marriage has just become a legal part of regular society, the Gay Games are bound to be a good time. Montreal is the host in 2006, so there could hardly be a better place
to take in this most inclusive and least known event on the international games circuit. To be more accurate, Montreal is actually hosting the Outgames after some political struggles with the Gay Games people. Infighting over the Outgames apparently. It's not clear to me what the underlying story is, but the Montreal Games are going to be huge. Not on that team, you say? Unlike the relatively exclusive World Master's Games, the religiously affiliated Maccabiah Games, or even the highly organized Police and Firefighter Games, you don't actually have to be gay to take part in the Gay Games. And you don't have to wrestle with pesky selection trials and arbitration in order to make the team either.
Although it seems slightly paradoxical to promote a separate 'Gay' or 'Out Games as a path to mainstream integration, it is probably still necessary to promote events which will desensitize people who are disturbed by questions of sexual orientation. People used to be disturbed at the sight of women's kneecaps, after all. And sure you can watch "Will and Grace" in prime time television, but we-and I would include Canada as well as the United States in this generalization-are still a very long way away horn having a comfortable level of acceptance for gay and lesbian people in everyday life.
In any case, rowing will be contested by athletes at next year's Games in Montreal and you should consider going. Partly because it's a rowing regatta and partly because it's probably the right thing to do. What better way to support the gay friends and crewmates you have or have had than by participating in a regatta at an historic Olympic rowing course? There is little doubt that they would appreciate the support. Although the rowing community as a whole is a relatively liberal thinking group, there is no shortage of hardship and discrimination horn homophobic thinking everywhere you look.
Despite that something like three percent of the population is homosexual, it's hard to come up with many professional athletes who are gay. Martina Navratilova for one, but any others? It really is an extremely disadvantaged population-to the point where it may be preferable for people to not know. Although certainly there is the fact that people's private lives are their private lives, we hear just about everything else about their kids and dogs. It's not just a coincidence that sexual orientation is so frequently guarded.
The only possible downside to this particular endeavor is that the competition may be a little on the weak end compared to other Games. Although I have to say that the rowing clubs that are specifically geared towards gay athletes seem to be very enthusiastic, it's not the highest caliber of rowing out there. This is largely a question of numbers of course, but any competition is basically what you make it.
The idea
is to support and embrace diversity in society and
to celebrate our differences and similarities through sport.
There are certainly many very good gay rowers out there in college and club crews, and perhaps this could provide an impetus to encourage more participation from the heterosexual rowing population. And who is going to complain about weak competition anyway? Even though it is only the Gay Games, what grandchild wouldn't be proud to see Grandpa's gold medal 50 years down the road? You have to think about the future. And really and truly, you would have to be either extremely repressed or a die-hard baseball fanatic in order to avoid enjoying Montreal in the summer.
The idea in general, of course, is to support and embrace diversity in society and to celebrate our differences and similarities through sport. Thinking about this is kind of our duty as responsible citizens, but it's also a great opportunity to partake in a unique event. And for those of you who still feel a little uncomfortable, remember you can always enter the straight four.
Ben Storey, MD, a former world champion in the lightweight men's pair, is a trained medical doctor who has refocused much of his energy on table hockey.
