Open Letter To The Rowing Organizing Committee Of Woga 2013

[bax912]

+++ Open Letter to the Rowing Organizing Committee of WOGA 2013, sent 2013-07-10 +++

 

 

on behalf of nearly twenty rowers from Berlin registered for rowing at the World Outgames 2013, I would like to address to you a matter of great importance:

 

Following latest information given on the Outgames website, a boat rental fee of 30 Euro is to be charged per seat, event and day, for training as well as competition. Only at first sight this might appear reasonable. However, compared to earlier rowing competitions e.g. Outgames in Copenhagen or Montreal, our own Queerschlag-Regatta or Gaygames in Amsterdam, boat rental fees in Gent simply are exorbitant.

 

To understand our concern, please consider that most of us rowers regularly sign up for two to four boat categories respectively races. The expenses for renting boats in Gent will reach an amount of 200 to 300 Euro per person. This is to be paid on top of the registration fee of 129 Euro and an extra fee of 55 Euro for participating in WOGA 2013 rowing events.

 

In earlier events the following participant fees incl. boat rental fees (!) were charged:

1998 – GayGames Amsterdam: 125 €

2001 – Internationale Queerschlag-Regatta Berlin: 40 €

2006 – Outgames Montreal: 235 €

2009 – Outgames Copenhagen: 165 €

The total costs for a rower in Gent easily will reach an amount of 400 Euro! You might understand that not all participants are in a comfortable financial situation that allows them to counterbalance these extraordinary expensenses. Consequently, they will have to reduce the number of events they actually planned to register for. Teams which have trained hard for a long time will fall apart!

 

Above all, participants were kept in uncertainty regarding the final costs of boat rental for a long time. In spring 2012, a few months after registration had started, a charge of 10 Euro per seat/day/event was announced on the website: http://www.world.out...n/sports/rowing Today (2013-07-09) it was changed to 30 Euro all of the sudden.

 

Only a few days earlier, for the first time we achieved unverified knowledge about the actual facts because one of us visited occasionally the all oars forum of GLRF. This information should have been communicated via e-mail and directly to all registered participants and on the official Outgames website, too. Beyond that, it was given far too late.

 

Generally, it is to be feared that the pricing and information policy, which we are experiencing right now, subsequently will result in less participants for future Outgames rowing events.

 

However, we do see a chance to turn the tide: Find a way to reduce boat rental fees and communicate it as soon as possible to all registered rowers.

 

 

met sportieve groeten

 

Andreas Böttcher

Queerschlag Berlin / Sportclub Berlin-Grünau e.V.

 

 

Andreas Böttcher

Bülowstr. 29

10783 Berlin

bax912@gmx.de

Edited July 10, 2013 by glrfcentral
Andreas mistakenly said Spring 2013 when he meant to say Spring 2012

[neochen]

I would like to add my name and concerns to the letter above by Andreas. DC Strokes Rowing Club will be bringing 16 participants to the 2013 World Outgames, and we have planned, from the beginning, on renting boats at a cost of 10 Euros / seat. It was with surprise today that I happened upon this letter, as no notice have been given or sent out to the participants with respect to the tripling of boat rental fees. For those seeking to race in four events, this means a cost of 60 Euros per event per person (for a day of practice and a day of racing), or 240 Euros total for all four events. This is significantly more than the 60-80 Euros we have been telling our members to expect to pay in rental fees. The result of this will be that most of our members will likely consider participating in fewer events, and very few of our crews will probably actually practice on August 2nd. (Skipping the practice alone could save crews 120 Euros per person.)

 

I am also particularly troubled by the fact that none of this information has been actively distributed to participants. In fact, when I went and read the message on the GLRF forum about the boat rental policy, it was only then that I realized that boat rental fees must be paid in cash. This type of information is critical for participants, and should be actively distributed to all paid participants, rather than be sent passively through the GLRF forums where it can be easily missed.

 

Ken Kriese

DC Strokes Regatta Planner

neochen@yahoo.com

[glrfcentral]

Ken,

 

You're right, this fact should have been transmitted earlier. GLRF first heard of the increase in price during our meeting with the Sports manager of the Outgames on 05 March in Antwerp.

 

The reason for the cost increase was explained as an issue of negotiation that developed between the regatta organizing committee and the Outgames. Several meetings and discussions were held about the significant cost increase. Apparently the intitial increase in boat rental fee was to be 30 Euros per seat per day per race. The Outgames succeeded in amending that price to 30 Euros per seat per event per day. The issue was finally declared non-negotiable, in other words, the rental price stays in place or the regatta is off.

 

At the GLRF-Outgames meeting, several alternatives were discussed because we (GLRF) said this was going to be a total shock to the crews. An idea was discussed of subsidizing a portion of the boat rental fees, from 30 Euros to 25 Euros since there now was extra money in the rowing budget. The Sports department felt it would be unfair to those who trailered their own boats and therefore said they would consider hosting a lunch for all the participants. GLRF said most rowers would prefer the subsidy over the hosted lunch but that was deemed to not be egalitarian to all the participants.

 

The sports department said they would take it under consideration but nothing further was done. GLRF should have included the boat rental price increase in our news update of 11 March in the GLRF Outgames group. We did not for the sole reason that a final decision on the boat rental price had not been made.

 

As we urged rowers to join the GLRF Outgames group and provide their inputs and votes on the race format, we awaited a word on the outcome of a boat rental price. We finally checked in the beginning of May and the price was to remain fixed at 30 Euros per seat per day. We can't recall when we updated the GLRF Regatta details page but we believe it was in mid-May that we corrected the rental price on our page.

 

The increased boat rental prices was the driving force behind the reason to have the Masters races confined to Saturday and the Open races confined to Sunday. Otherwise all crews would have been facing a potential doubling of their boat rental costs if each of their events' races took place on different days.

 

The discussion then turned to helping rowers with the boat rental price increases by encouraging people to trailer extra boats. We launched the Classifieds feature for GLRF in March and in June, we configured the listings just for the Outgames. We just assumed that all regional clubs would trailer their own boats, and that rowers could place ads. We were mistaken in that belief.

 

For the past 6 months, we have urged everyone to join the GLRF Outgames group and subscribe to the news. We announced the boat rental page on 27 June but I guess most people did not avail themselves of "following" the news, whether they were a group member or not. We created that page because there was next to no information being put out about many of the details of the regatta and we knew, from emails, that many rowers had questions.

 

The role GLRF has played in this regatta organization has been to advocate for the rowers and the many diverse desires, from the Danish, the Australians, the Germans, the French, and Americans. As much as we wanted to host the official rowing page, the Outgames asked that we serve in a support role, hosting the discussion forum and for coordinating social events. The official information page was to be the Outgames rowing page and their rowing Facebook page.

 

At this point, I think we should ask the Outgames if they could subsidize the training day boat rental fees, as a partial give back. You are welcome to contact the Chair of the Board of the Outgames, Bart Abeel at bart.abeel@woga2013.org

 

- Brian