When rowing was cancelled as a featured sport at the 2008 Eurogames, we had been in conversations with a local Barcelona rowing club about the possibility of European rowers participating in an independent coastal rowing regatta on the same weekend. Unfortunately, that did not pan out.
However, there is another possibility: the XIV Banyoles Masters Fest International Regatta 19 – 20 Jul 2008. It sounds like a lot of fun – a low entry fee of 35 Euros includes all races and a dinner party with lots of delicious Spanish food and lots of FREE beer, and a cocktail regatta on Sunday evening. So if you’re still yearning for some Spanish sun, check it out.
We receive a fair number of inquiries from members looking to row as they travel abroad. Our usual response is to suggest a posting in the country forum of the member’s destination. We in turn send out a message digest email to the GLRF members in that country, letting them know there is a posting and suggest that they post a reply. Those digest emails can be very helpful when there are a lot of GLRF members in a given region of the country. But what about those countries where we don’t have members or where there aren’t many members…? Then it can be a little more of a challenge.
Part of the value of GLRF is the existence of a connected community. For those others who don’t have a “family” (huge smile here), they are left to their own devices – referrals, and research on the web, and thumbing through the Rower’s Almanac . Most rowing club members attempt to contact clubs at their destinations. That requires advance planning and more work, along with the hope that the club will check their email, and be open to welcoming outside rowers. Here are some other tips:
share your experiences with us so we can expand our knowledge base as Anna did when she visited Beijing ; for you web savvy among us, what do you suggest as a medium to share the repository of knowledge?
contact boat manufacturers – we did this with Carl Douglas Racing Shells and with Cucchietti Racing Shells in Argentina. You can almost guarantee getting a nice row on a new boat!
contact your local boat manufacturer reps for your region – they may have some connections abroad. Drew Harrison, the North America NW Region Rep for Wintech Racing offered this advice for a GLRF member headed to the pacific rim: ” There is a terrific rowing course outside Shanghai where the provincial team lives and trains. It’s as nice as any man made course in the world and was the site of my first visit to China, the 1993 East Asian Games. We stayed in lodging at the course, but I don’t know how to describe how to get there or the names of any current key people there. Our manufacturing facility is 3 to 4 hours drive from Shanghai in the Hangzhou region.”
A Lisbon sculler’s registration heralded the entry of Portugal into the GLRF worldwide community, marking the 26th country to compose the worldwide gay and lesbian rowing network. Portugal has an active rowing community with clubs along the coast as well as inland. Many northern European crews train in Portugal’s temperate inland waterways during the winter months. GLRF mapped some of the many rowing clubs in Portugal.
The 5th International LGBT Tournament of Paris, a weekend multi-sport event, will feature rowing as one of the 14 sports disciplines. The regatta will take place on Sunday morning at the Base Nautique in Choisy-le-Roi, a s suburb south of Paris. The venue is easily accessible from Paris using the regional train service.
The format will follow what is traditionally called a “stake race.” Competitors will race to the end, round a buoy, and return, in a timed format style. The race will feature one category: 4x+ (coxed quad). A similar attempt to organize a regatta in 2007 fizzled due to a problem with sourcing boats. This year, the organizing committee has resolved the issue by focusing the race on one boat category.
Racing will take place during the morning followed by a picnic along the rowing basin. Due to tournament event organizational constraints, the registration must close by 16 Mar 2008 so all rowers are encouraged to register very soon.
GLRF visited the venue in December 2006 and will offer its Seat Search service and message forum chat for all members.
The 5th International LGBT Tournament of Paris, a weekend multi-sport event, will feature rowing as one of the 14 sports disciplines. The regatta will take place on Sunday morning at the Base Nautique in Choisy-le-Roi, a s suburb south of Paris. The venue is easily accessible from Paris using the regional train service.
The format will follow what is traditionally called a “stake race.” Competitors will race to the end, round a buoy, and return, in a timed format style. The race will feature one category: 4x+ (coxed quad). A similar attempt to organize a regatta in 2007 fizzled due to a problem with sourcing boats. This year, the organizing committee has resolved the issue by focusing the race on one boat category.
Racing will take place during the morning followed by a picnic along the rowing basin. Due to tournament event organizational constraints, the registration must close by 16 Mar 2008 so all rowers are encouraged to register very soon.
GLRF visited the venue in December 2006 and pictures are on the Gotcha! Gallery GLRF France gallery. GLRF will offer its Seat Search service and message forum chat for all members.
Israel became the 25th country to join the GLRF worldwide community today when a rower from Tel Aviv registered online. Israel has a small but strong rowing community and has supported the sport since the 1930’s. Many rowers rave about the smooth rowing conditions in Israel.
The 2008 Eurogames organizing committee has eliminated rowing from the schedule of sports disciplines to be offered at the XII Eurogames scheduled for July 2008. The move was revealed after the registration system was launched today and website visitors found rowing was not on the list of sports disciplines. Instead, canoe and kayak has been added to the list of sporting events. The decision came as a surprise to GLRF and is expected to significantly disappoint the many rowers in the European gay and lesbian community who had planned to participate.
The decision comes in spite of repeated efforts by GLRF over the last year to develop liaisons within the Barcelona rowing community and to provide introductions for the Eurogames 2008 staff. These efforts included two separate visits by GLRF to Barcelona in 2007. See related stories. The possibility of a coastal rowing regatta, as an alternative, had begun to take shape and would have provided rowers with a unique opportunity to expand their rowing skills.
GLRF deeply regrets the decision by Eurogames 2008 to eliminate rowing.
Los Angeles; GLRF sends annual holiday greetings to 64 recipients. Each year GLRF creates a special holiday greeting to send to the national rowing governing bodies of every country where GLRF has a member. This year, that number climbed to 24 countries and FISA. In addition, cards are sent to those in the rowing industry who have demonstrated a strong support for the GLRF organization and mission. On behalf of the GLRF membership and the GLRF organization, thank you for your ongoing support.
Los Angeles; The GLRF website is getting a makeover. The project, slated to take several months, will introduce a new template design, and feature more robust online tools to enhance the community interactivity. In the coming months, the website will finally be login-enabled for all web pages and not just the message board. Other conversions will include a migration to Dreamweaver, more php integration, and a fully functional mysql database.
During the remodeling, please bear with some of the dust and construction materials.
Worthington; GLRF members and visitors may have experienced difficulty accessing the website between 03 and 06 Nov 2007. The problem resulted from the online hosting service’s planned server migration maintenance period. The original estimate had been for a maximum down time of 14 hours but due to technical challenges, lasted 116 hours.
The migration snafu caused immeasurable harm to the GLRF brand and the website credibility since GLRF was hosting a booth at the Head of the Hooch regatta over that weekend and many visitors had picked up brochures and inquired about the organization. We will be pursuing alternate hosting solutions to avoid similar situations in the future.
