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http://www.glrf.info/gotchagallery/data/media/302/Rowing04_Photo_Eric_Lanuit.jpg Paris-based photographer and former rower Eric Lanuit has profiled rowers at a regatta in France in a 87-page photo essay in his online magazine, Character. The magazine, which is only published online, is almost entirely focused on the images and the emotions they create and the stories they tell.
warning: being a French publication, the content of the issues has no limits and does not recognize any taboos. “The only thing that matters are the aesthetics whether it is in the beauty or in the ugliness.”
The rowing photo essay borrows from the German rowing retailer New Wave’s clothing line ‘Rowing Nothing Else.’ The images share a vivid sense of the feeling of the dedication and gritty reality of rowing. Any rower looking at the images will instantly relate to the feeling of camaraderie and closeness that rowers feel, in an almost remote and unknown connection from the perspective of an outsider.
If you’re looking for lots of skin, massive muscle, and revealing shots of junk, you won’t find it here. Rather, the essay gives a peek behind the curtains of the reality of rowers, http://www.glrf.info/gotchagallery/data/media/302/Rowing02_Photo_Eric_Lanuit.jpg their body language, and their often scruffed appearance and their focus on rowing while not preening and posing for the camera.
The title of the essay is perfectly chosen and the images depicted are just that. The images were shot over the course of one day on Sunday, 15 May 2011 at the Régates de Masse (Masses Regatta) in Mantes-la-Jolie (approx. 34 miles or 55 km west of Paris), at the Stade nautique international Didier-Simond de Mantes en Yvelines.
The rowers featured in the photo shoot vary in age: some are juniors, some are university, and some are senior rowers from a number of teams and clearly more than one country! French photographers have the luxury of being free of the American legal system and can more freely capture their subjects without fear of liability or retribution. They don’t have to get signed waivers …
Rowing Nothing Else appears in the 4th online issue of Character, issue 2, Fall 2011, Volume 2. To find the photo essay, you need to jump to page 60 (look for the 4th bar at the bottom of the flash player). If you prefer, you can page through from the beginning but you'll have to thumb through the essay of drawings on Bambi and The Bears ... (again, read the warning above).
For those who are not fluent in french, the text of page 63 reads: (and if our translation is lacking, then please help us refine it for other viewers!!!)
For those reading page 61, and who are unfamiliar with the Tour de Leman, it is a 160 km rowing endurance race that circles Lac Leman, otherwise known as Lake Geneva. The annual race is held at the end of September and can last up to 17 hours, depending on the weather. The best time recorded is 11hours:55minutes:19seconds.
Just across the wire: the Florida Rowing Center (FRC) has just posted the boats that will be available for sale at the end of the 2012 winter rowing season.
The idea behind the boat sales list is to encourage rowers to head down to FRC, enjoy some sweet sculling while trying out a variety of shells. Then you can put down a $500 deposit for the shell you want and pick it up or have it shipped to you in May 2012.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Florida Rowing Center, the boathouse is located on Lake Wellington in Wellington, a small village-like community 12 miles west of West Palm Beach, Florida. In case there are any rowers who don't fly in for weekends of caviar, champagne, and wild naked jacuzzi parties, the City of West Palm Beach is 48 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, 70 miles north of Miami, and 180 miles south of Orlando.
Perez Hilton recently reported on a new rowing movie currently in production, featuring Sarah Megan Thomas, James Van Der Beek and Glenn Morshower.
http://www.glrf.info/gotchagallery/data/media/300/sarahandjames_backwards.jpg
Perez gives a quick synopsis:
The article goes on to say the film is on location in Philadelphia. No doubt this has the Boathouse Row in an uproar. What we want to know is who is cleaning up the goose poop on the docks every morning? Certainly not James ...
IMDB shows the film is now in post production and is scheduled for a 2012 summer release.
Check out some of the pics and videos of the movie on the GLRF Gotcha! Gallery
Chicago Rowing Union recently had a write up in the local gay and lesbian newspaper, The Windy City Times. The article focused on the club's look back at their 2011 season, and helped to promote the club's end of season fundraiser, a black tie optional prom dance event, to be held this Saturday, 12 November 2011.
GLRF member @craigers provided the sound bites for the article:
If you're interested in attending, you can buy tickets online at the CRU website.
Read the full story at the Windy City Times website.
GLRF member @yankinbc aka Scott Larsen recently wrote an article for Vers magazine, an online magazine devoted to the GLBT community in Canada and it's supporters. He writes about one of three passions in his life: rowing. In the article, Scott reflects on rowing and the need for a gay and lesbian rowing community. Find the article here.
Having rowed in college, Scott Larsen feels the hunger to return to his passion after getting settled and happily married in Vancouver, British Columbia. Little does his husband know the destiny that awaits him as a rower's spouse ....
He has joined the Vancouver GLRF group, The Fantastic Foars, and has posted in both the GLRF United States and the GLRF Canada forums, hoping to meet and connect with other rowers.
There are few words that can truly express the experience and the feel of rowing in a setup boat. We found this video in our Rowing Videos feed page and thought it might be useful for those looking to jump into the sport as well as coaches hoping to show crews some of the technique they want to achieve. The video takes you through an entire 2000 m. race in a coxed four, and allows you, the viewer to experience a “start” as well as the settle and the sprint at the end.
The video cam is mounted on the rower’s head so you can instantly see how much or how little he moves his head in the course of this race. Most videos are taken from the coxswain’s vantage point, from the shore, or from a coaching launch. Notice how smooth the boat moves, as the catches and releases are all in synchronization, and you’ll see the good posture of the rowers and the turn and reach at the catch. We’re not sure if it is the wide angle of the lens but it seems to show the oars bending in the drive (the stroke). This is truly a unique chance to experience rowing in a rower’s shoes ….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK5mC8HZ5TU
Credit: YouTube video by cyclebikes taken on 5/21/2011: Merrimac River Rowing Association Men vs. Narragansett Boat Club Men, Open 4+. 2000m.
We hope cyclebikes will keep his video available for all to enjoy. It seems that the minute a rowing video is featured or referenced on the GLRF website, the video publishers scream “ahhhh, gay people, run away” and they take their videos down … Our reference to this video does not imply any type of sexual orientation.
Vancouver; Although rowing is not a featured sport at the 2011 North American Outgames, there is a two-day masters rowing event that is scheduled for 23 – 24 Jul 2011, the weekend preceding the 2011 North American Outgames, 25 – 31 Jul 2011 . So if you were hoping to attend or participate in the community events surrounding the 2011 North American Outgames, rowers can still get their rowing fix.
2011 will mark the second year of the Cascadia Masters Regatta. Hosted by the Cascadia Masters Group, a confederacy of master rowers from various rowing clubs in the greater Vancouver area, the regatta is slated to be held on the Deas Slough in Delta, British Columbia. That venue may change since there was talk of the regatta being moved to a different location each year.
The 2011 event is listed as offering two masters categories: masters and adaptive. The 2010 regatta offered entries to 8+, 4+, 4x, 2x, 2-, and 1x. Regatta Central’s statistics show 207 entries from 19 clubs.
Currently, the regatta is scheduled to open registration on 01 Jun 2011 and close registration on 06 Jul 2011. What little information that can be found is on Regatta Central, and these two pages of the Rowing BC website: scheduled event and story.
GLRF had previously met with the Executive Director of Rowing British Columbia last year in order to propose a GLRF promotional partnership in support of the Cascadia Regatta. In addition, GLRF sent an email to the regatta director this spring, detailing our desire to promote the regatta with a GLRF regatta page and an All Oars Network group. Unfortunately, there has been no response. That lack of response should not be necessarily taken to mean gay and lesbian rowers are not welcome. It could be that, as is the case with many local regattas, the committee has not had a chance to respond or is just very busy with other matters. Canadians have traditionally been very supportive of gay and lesbian sports affiliations.
Unless there is a positive response, GLRF will not be creating a GLRF Regatta page or a group on the All Oars Network for the regatta but any GLRF member is welcome to create their own group on All Oars Groups if they plan to compete at the Cascadia Regatta and want to encourage others to participate.
For GLRF members who do plan to attend the North American Outgames in either a sports or a social capacity, tickets can be purchased here. It is important to understand that even if you register as an athlete, you will still need to buy an event ticket(s). Athletes get a discount on the event tickets which are really tiered passes. Spectators buy the same passes but just pay a higher fee.
The Outgames website is a little confusing because there are two links for tickets on the registration page of the 2011 Outgames website: the first under the heading of North America Outgames Event Tickets, and then another below that section, at the bottom of the page that is called the Spectator Link. Either link will secure you passes. The second link asks for a lot more information since it is intended to ‘encourage’ you to book your hotel lodging reservations through a centralized tourism source. Then your information is passed seamlessly to the same Ticket Card web page that we listed previously where you can purchase the event passes. Confused? Post a topic on the Canada All Oars forum and we’ll do our best to answer it.
Although rowers are not the only ones who are mobile hands-full challenged, the environment that surrounds the rowing community can make owning and using a fancy smart phone just that much more treacherous. In the GLRF booth, we have seen first hand the effects of 3 hours of afternoon sun on our credit card reader, our Nikon CoolPix camera, and our mobile phone. The screens go dark and the electronics become sketchy. Now throw in some Royal Canadian Henley rain and wind blowing everything off the table, some Marina Del Rey beach launch sand, a few minutes calling the coach while your mobile is (securely?) held in a shoulder/head cradle while unloading a boat from the trailer at Oak Ridge, the requisite nudge and fall from the resting position on an erg, or a slide off the dash of the launch boat because Coach Nick’s Miami Beach Rowing Club phone is on ring and vibrate, and and you’ll soon agree that rowers and mobile phones are not meant for a lasting same sex marriage.
So it was by chance that we came upon the perfect rower smart phone. As we prepare to launch a mobile app for the GLRF website, we’re spending a lot of time online looking at mobile phone forums and tech sheets. One banner ad in a forum we visited caught our eye, the Casio GzOne Commando. We clicked the ad and were amazed to read the ‘toughness‘ capabilities of this phone: withstanding 30 minutes submerged under 1 m. of water, operating in a 4″ of rain per hour deluge in Washington DC, 1 hour of vibration riding in the back of Tom Gallagher’s flat bed truck, 24 hours of continuous salt water spray, … well you get the idea.
It’s like the mobile phone engineers rowed for 10 years. Aside from the toughness factor and the hyper masculine look (for those on the DL), here’s a pretty objective review for those who just have to have every Android app out there.
Amazon Wireless, using Verizon, is offering the phone in “CDMA” mode for North America but some of us aren’t at the highest salary levels and it was great to discover the phone can be ‘adapted’ to MetroPCS. What about the rest of the world? We googled the phone under GSM and couldn’t find any reliable links but we’re sure that if enough rowers contact Casio, they will bring out a GSM version.
We’re in the process of designing a new GLRF t-shirt which involves some french words. We came across this site, Aviron DameDeNage, that is entirely in French but offers the most cool desktop images that are updated monthly. Find it here.
What’s even better is the system senses your desktop settings and guides you to select the file that is most suitable for downloading.
The September image is spectacular and for those of you who don’t speak french, the photo credit reads:
“This month, it’s the Swiss who have the honor, shown with André Vonarburg et Florian Stofer who compete for the Swiss national team in the double. The location is Sarnen which is the location for the Swiss national training center.”
Merci Félix Dieu pour la photo
