Happy Holidays! Get on those ergs and stay vigilant in your training! The 2026 Sin City Erg is less than a month away. Registration Update Regular registration for the 2026 Sin City Ergatta is open and the closing date has been extended to midnight on Tuesday, December 23rd. After that, fees increase once late registration begins. Register today! The Sin City Erg is as much a team competition as an individual competition. Reach out to your rowing club and invite them to participate – with our one-price-all-you-can-compete format, some folks can just compete on a team, if they prefer. Encourage your juniors at your clubs to participate. Even if your club’s junior program isn’t sending a team, juniors can compete on their own or with a few others. We have a special registration fee in place for Juniors and University rowers. Sin City Classic Event Update The big update is that the Sunday closing party now has two parts: Concert Closing Party Because of the huge crowds, the organizers have made the concert, featuring LeAnn Rimes, a separate ticketed event. To attend the concert, you need to buy a ticket at this link: https://www.sincityclassic.org/events If you prefer to just attend the Closing Party that follows the Concert, you can do that with your wristband that you get with your Sin City Erg registration packet. Here are the full list of events scheduled for the 2026 Sin City Classic: Thursday 2025 Compete Sports Diversity Awards (ticketed event at Flamingo) Drag Queen Bingo (ticketed event) at Flamingo Athlete Welcome Party at Gipsy with Karaoke! Cornhole for Charity and Charity Darts Tournament in the Sunset Ballroom Kicking Out Transphobia Soccer Match Sin City Classic Registration Party in Sunset Ballroom RuPaul Drag Race Viewing Party (we'll have special perks for VIPs this year too!) After parties with shuttles at Piranha and Gipsy Sapphic Soiree returns for our Womxn+ participants and will be at a new venue Late night parties at Piranha and Gipsy with shuttles Announcement coming soon about a Comedy Show as well Sin City Classic Concert featuring LeAnn Rimes! Closing Party starting at 10pm at Brooklyn Bowl Coming soon - a singlet gear party in partnership with our friends from Wrestling and Grappling! There are sober space meetings and resources as well, and there will be some additional Drag Brunch events to be announced for Saturday and Sunday. Spread The Word! Please post on your social media accounts about the extension of regular registration and share the information about our two registration links:, Over23 and Under23!

Organizers of the annual Sin City Classic are gearing up for the event’s next gathering, which runs January 15-19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. One of the world’s largest LGBTQ+ sporting festival, t routinely attracts around 10,000 participants — and you could be one of them! The Sin City Classic started in 2008 as an LGBTQ+ softball tournament. However, it’s grown since then to include over a dozen other sports and games. Pack your bags, we’re going on an adventure Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for the best LGBTQ+ travel guides, stories, and more. For 2026, this includes: Basketball Billiards Bowling Bridge Cheerleading Cornhole Curling Darts – soft tip and steel tip Dodgeball, Flag football Golf Indoor rowing Kickball Martial arts Pickleball Rodeo university Soccer Softball Swimming Tennis Ultimate frisbee Volleyball (Indoor) and Volleyball (Sand) Wrestling & grappling. Much of the action takes place in and around the host hotel: Flamingo Las Vegas. Solo competitors welcome The softball aspect remains the biggest part of the festival, with organizers expecting between 200-260 teams to enter. However, registration is now open for all events, and you’d be wise to snap up a place early rather than leaving it too late. The same goes for the host hotel, which is offering special deals for Sin City Classic attendees if booked before December 31. The deal is also available at the neighboring LINQ Hotel as well as Horseshoe Las Vegas. We asked the organizers for more details about how to participate, especially if you’re not part of a team. Dr. Jason Peplinski, Co-Executive Director of the Sin City Classic, said the festival is structured in a way that “explicitly encourages ‘everyone’ to compete ‘in whichever way they like,’ which implies that individuals who are not part of a pre-formed team are welcome.” Solo participants are welcome in most events, including tennis, darts, swimming, and bowling. Some sports, like bridge, will pair you with a partner, while team sports may place you in a free-agent pool. Peplinski advises registering early: “The festival is very popular—slots for high-demand sports like tennis and rowing fill rapidly.” “The event pages don’t always list a concrete maximum number of total spots per sport (especially for singles vs doubles). That means there’s some uncertainty about how quickly they fill or whether there will be a wait-list,” he adds. Evening parties Although the majority of visitors come from across the US, the games are open to international entrants. And even if you don’t get a slot or don’t wish to compete, spectators are welcome. You can also join some of the evening partying. “Everyone is welcome to attend the hosted events associated with the festival,” says Peplinski. “Please note that certain events, such as the Closing Party, require a festival wristband. Wristbands may be purchased at the official website.” “You do not need to be an athlete to attend the Opening Registration Party or the events held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Piranha or Gypsy. However, festival wristbands may provide access to discounted entry or benefits at some venues, and these wristbands are available for purchase by all attendees, regardless of athletic participation.” January can be a depressing month. But trading post-holiday blues for Vegas sunshine, athletic competition, and a community of 10,000 LGBTQ+ athletes? That’s one New Year’s resolution worth keeping. Check the official Sin City Classic website for full details. Related: Join the GayCities newsletter for weekly updates on the best LGBTQ+ destinations and events—nearby and around the world. Don't forget to share:

Home page for the Sin City ERg

Cambridge University has voted to ban trans women from competing in women’s college-level boat races, aligning its policies with British Rowing’s gender eligibility guidelines. The decision, made by the Cambridge University Combined Boat Club (CUCBC), saw college boat club captains narrowly vote to adopt British Rowing’s gender

Kurts Adams Rozentals is an elite rower who has competed internationally in canoe for the UK. But no more, or at least not for the next two years. Rozentals has been banned from competition for two years because he posted what, by all indications, was a pretty explicit and racy video on Instagram. “This ban would have never happened if athletes were funded properly,” he told the BBC. Certainly many elite athletes in “Olympic” sports like canoe struggle to pay the bills, no question about that. “And while I understand the video could be described as crazy, it was not illegal and certainly shouldn’t be the reason for banning an athlete.” Get off the sidelines and into the game Our weekly newsletter is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues. Paddle UK, which issued the suspension, said the discipline came not just because of the post, which was on Instagram, but because Rozentals told the press it was because of a post on one of his accounts on another site. We’re not sure exactly what the photo was that Kurts Adams Rozentals posted. Though it’s safe to assume it was pretty explicit. Paddle UK said the posting of the photo brought the organization into “serious disrepute.” Rozentals himself said the “the video could be described as crazy.” It was, according to the BBC, something on a plane. Rozentals told the BBC that, in hindsight, he probably wouldn’t post something like that video again. Soooooo… it was clearly explicit. Still, it’s understandable why someone might post something like that. Elite athletes often struggle to make ends meet. Finding sources of income while you’re training for elite national and international competition can be tough. Rozentals seems to have found that revenue source posting hot pics and videos. He now has over 100k followers on Instagram, and he said he’s made over $130k from posting. That’s a lot more than virtually anyone is going to making canoeing. “It was the first time in my life I saw real progress in my financial situation,” he told the BBC. “It was the first time I was able to fund the training myself. … And it came from crazy videos like the one that got me banned. Either way, Kurts Adams Rozentals, who has won five national or international medals, according to Paddle UK, won’t be paddling competitively for a couple years. And now without Paddle UK looking over his shoulder, there’s no telling what he’ll post next. Or how much that $130k is going to grow. Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.

It’s been nearly a month since Teal Cohen stood alongside her U.S. coxless four teammates on the banks of Shanghai’s Dianshan Lake, hands on hearts and gold medals around their necks as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. However, even though Cohen is now a world rowing champion, she is not basking in the glory. “Honestly, I feel like it’s the opposite!” laughs the 26-year-old Texan, as she speaks to Outsports, fresh from a training session in Princeton. “I feel like other people are reveling in it, while I came back down to earth after a week or so!” Get off the sidelines and into the game Our weekly newsletter is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues. Yet Cohen’s modesty is just her way of compartmentalizing an outstanding achievement that has come early on in this Olympic cycle. This time last year, she was picking up the pieces after Paris 2024, where she was representing Team USA and also Team LGBTQ. The U.S. quad sculls team she was part of finished last in all three of their races. Even at such a low point, she was eager to leap forward again. “I definitely came away with a sense of disappointment, but also knowing what the speed is to win. “You get a sense of how fast that is, and it gave me something to work towards. “So hitting top speeds was the goal of the year, and it was really cool to see it all come together in Shanghai.” In late September, a super-strong second 500m laid the foundations for Cohen, Camille Vandermeer, Azja Czajkowski and Kate Knifton to hold off the challenge of Romania and New Zealand and take the World Rowing Championships title. All four were determined to deliver, with the Paris 2024 regatta having failed to produce any medals for Team USA’s women rowers. “We all had different experiences in the Olympic year, but we knew there was a lot of room to grow and to improve,” she adds. “Around six months ago, we came together as a boat to start building towards the World Championships, and that was exciting because we felt like we had something to prove.” In July last year, Outsports reported that Cohen was among six publicly out LGBTQ rowers in the American women’s team for the Paris Olympics. She spoke of wanting to be “a role model for the next generation of athletes and use my platform to promote inclusiveness and diversity in sports.” Growing up gay in Dallas, attending an independent all-girls school where she started rowing at the age of 13, and coming from a family with a strong pedigree in what is a more conservative sport, there was no metaphorical compass with which to navigate queerness. “Back then, the area I grew up in, and the school I went to, it wasn’t the most welcoming space,” says Cohen. “But from there, I went to study in Seattle, at University of Washington. And among so many reasons why I picked that school, it seemed like I could go there and be the best version of myself, and live my truest life. “It felt like you didn’t even need to come out, which was such a crazy concept to me, coming from Texas.” By this time, she had already competed in the World Rowing Junior Championships, and an NCAA win was soon being claimed on the water, with success in the varsity eight at the 2019 Championships. Two years later, she took away gold and silver medals from the U23 Worlds, and made her senior World Championships debut in 2022 as a CRCA First-Team All-American, training full-time at Princeton. She credits her friends from Seattle for helping her find comfort in her own skin. “That was super important for me at 18, 19. “On the rowing team in college, one person came out, then a couple more people… it was always a very welcoming space. “Being on that team is a huge part of why I feel I now have this platform.” Though she quickly plays down her wider influence — “I’m not Katie Ledecky out here!” — Cohen knows that it’s all relative when it comes to LGBTQ representation within a sport such as hers. She commends U.S. Rowing for putting in the work on inclusion, particularly around Pride Month and LGBTQ History Month, but acknowledges that there are barely any such signals sent out at a global federation level. “I know the people who are following me and looking up to me are younger rowers. “Showing them that you can be whoever you are, be your truest self and still be able to row and be successful has been really important to me. “I’ve been doing my best to show that there is that representation in rowing.” In recent years, she has been back to her old school north of Dallas, where current pupils have told her they appreciate her visibility. “Hearing that I was such a role model to them feels really good because I didn’t have that growing up.” Hard work starts again in long road towards L.A. 2028 There was never any doubt about wanting to be named on Outsports’ Team LGBTQ for Paris. “The stories you guys were running last summer were great, and having almost 200 athletes who were out was super cool!” she says. The ultimate ambition for Cohen in this cycle is not only to be on the rosters again for L.A. 2028 but to be standing on top of the podium. But she’s not the sort of person to get ahead of herself. “We have a couple of domestic races in the fall and into the winter, which will set us up to make the team for next year, so first we’re looking ahead to those. “I know I need to perform at my best to be in the top women’s boat again. That’s definitely goal one, so I’m working on building strength, a lot of low-end intensity. “Then we’ll go into World Cup racing from May, followed by the World Championships again in Amsterdam in August.” Defending a title will bring extra pressure, but working with a sports psychologist has helped Cohen to better manage both her emotions and the external expectations. You can be sure this world champion will not rest on her laurels. “To have a really good performance in year one was great. But then after a week or so, the four of us were saying, ‘all right, that was awesome — now let’s start over and do it again next year.’” Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.

Images from GLRF booths hosted at worldwide regattas, events, and pride festivals.

The Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation will host our fifth indoor rowing event, an ergatta, on Sunday 18 January 2026, in Las Vegas. The Sin City Erg is presented for the worldwide LGBTQ+ indoor and outdoor rowing community, age 13 and over. The event is inclusive to the broader rowing community and everyone is welcome so bring your straight teammates to compete! The ergatta is part of the Sin City Classic, the largest annual LGBTQ+ multi-sport event in the world. If you're looking at the tags and wondering what the 2X, 4X and 8+ is all about, that's because this event is offering standard individual races as well as team events. Everyone registers, then we get a line up for the team events and plug it in the computer. The race runs just like an individual race, except the lineup for each boat is calculated by the computer to show the combined time of the team boat compared to other team boats. First across the line wins, just like on the water. Sounds like a great challenge for university teams, for junior teams, for club teams ....

The Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation will host a booth at the 2025 Head Of The Charles Regatta.   Stop by and learn about our Global Rowing Community.  Use our new app to access our community platform and register for free, in just a few minutes.   Help support our initiatives to promote inclusion, acceptance, and promoting rowing in the LGBTQ community: * The Rower’s Pledge * Rainbow Logo Challenge * Rowing Enquiries and Share A Link   Get a GLRF t-shirt and show your true colors!   Dates: Friday, 17 Oct 2025: 10h00 – 18h00 Saturday, 18 Oct 2025: 07h30 – 18h30 Sunday, 19 Oct 2025: 07h30 – 17h30   Location: exact location to be announced   General area: Christian Herter Park On Soldiers Field Road and across from the Harvard football stadium Along the Charles River Boston, Massachusetts United States

The Valencia Gay Games will feature rowing. The details for the regatta are not specified nor is the venue. In the bid for the 2030 Gay Games, rowing was specified to be a coastal competition in quads. There is no information on the exact dates of the regatta or how boats will work since most of us don't have coastal boats. No word on whether there is a rental fee. As details are updated, information will be updated here. The registration fees for rowing include a general registration fee of US$195 and a supplemental sport fee for rowing of US$95.00.

Current Regattas+ Listings 2025 Rainbow Logo Challenge 2025 Sin City Erg Wrap Up Share A Link - an international database of rowing clubs GLRF platform feature: Our Picks

The Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation hosted its fourth indoor rowing event, the Sin City Erg, on Sunday, 19 January 2025, in Las Vegas, United States.  The event is part of the multi-sport festival known as the Sin City Classic.  The event draws over 8,000 participants who compete in 24 (at last count) sport and club tourneys, and is the largest annual LGBTQ+ sporting event in the world.   Framed as the Global LGBTQ+ Indoor Rowing Event, the 2025 Sin City Erg was held in the gymnasium of the Cambridge Recreation Center.  Twenty-one ergs were laid out in a two-row semicircle that faced a large projection screen.  A total of 61 events were offered in 1X, 2X, 4X, 8X, PR1, PR2, and PR3, for men, women, and non-binary genders.  The team events use a feature of the Concept2 race software that allows multiple participants to race as one boat.    A total of 20 participants competed across 37 entries in 8 events:   ·         Over 44 men ·         Over 44 women ·         Under 45 men ·         Under 45 women ·         Open Women ·         Open Men ·         Team 2X Under 45 men ·         Team 2X Under 45 women   Participants hailed from Washington, Maryland, Florida, California, and Nevada.   Medals were awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.    The 2025 Sin City Erg marked the first active use of the Regattas+ listing feature on the GLRF website.  Take a look. GLRF members added themselves to Members Going.  Images were uploaded to albums. Results were added to Files. Comments were posted. The Seat Search feature was used for a Team 4X event.   The Regattas+ feature is available to any GLRF member to add a regatta, ergatta, or camp/clinic that would be of interest to the LGBTQ rowing community and/or that a GLRF member will be attending and hopes to meet up with others.

via @theonion Best. MAGA. Takedown. Ever. ht: thejenniwren

The Lachine rowing club is proud to present its seventh coastal rowing regatta on Lac St-Louis in Lachine on Sunday August 17, 2025. The regatta will be a FISA style course consisting in a 6 km course on the Lac St-Louis with 7 turning buoys. This year we will again propose a Junior course with a length of 1 km in the Lachine basin. In case of a high number of participants in a category there will be heats of 4 km to determine the finalists. We propose several categories such as solo, double and quad for Men and Women and if possible, a mixed quad category. EuroDiffusion boats will be available for rent.

In partnership with Rowing Canada Aviron and Aviron Québec, the Lachine rowing club presents the Quebec Beach Sprint Championship at the spectacular Cap St-Jacques beach in Pierrefonds, Montréal, on August 16th, 2025. Come discover this incredible rowing discipline! This regatta includes a land portion and a water portion. At the starting signal, two rowers will have to run towards their boat, embark and do a slalom around 3 buoys over a distance of 250m. The return is done in a straight line, will disembark the boat to run towards the finish line. EuroDiffusion’s and RowingSportBoat coastal rowing boats will be provided. The rental price of the boats is included in the registration fees.

Lauren Rowles became the first woman to win a rowing gold at three Paralympic games in 2024.

Join Community Rowing, Inc. for a celebratory Pride Row on the Charles River! CRI will have two barges available for an easy and enjoyable row, open to all. This event welcomes everyone and is a celebration of community, inclusion, and pride on the water. CRI has also invited rowers from Cambridge Boat Club, Riverside Boat Club, and Union Boat Club to take part in the festivities. All are welcome!  

Both guests and members can submit new entries. All new entries must be approved by a member of the staff before they become visible to everyone. Add New Entry The Rainbow Logo Challenge is a month long opportunity for rowing clubs and programmes, governing bodies, and related businesses to openly show support for the LGBTQ rowing community by incorporating rainbow colours in as many of their social media and website logos as possible. The Challenge runs in conjuction with a country's recognized Pride month. Listed below are the current and past participants. 2025 Rainbow Logo Challenge

The World’s Toughest Row – Pacific starts in June each year with teams participating from around the World. The annual edition of this race see’s teams starting from the historic harbour of Monterey, California, following the path of many adventurers and explorers of yester year. An incredible atmosphere of apprehension and excitement is guaranteed during the pre-race period as teams complete their final preparations to set off to row across the mid-Pacific Ocean. A finish line as unique as Hanalei Bay on the stunning island of Kaua’i is hard to beat as the backdrop to what will be the most incredible, once in a lifetime adventure. It is incredibly important to us that the partners we work with reflect the ethos of our races, our participants and our principles as a business. As such this means that by choosing to work alongside our partners, our teams are in turn guaranteed expertise, high quality product and service as well as beneficial rates on purchases. Our partners are dedicated specialists within their field, ensuring that product and knowledge delivery is a step towards success.

I am the author of a new queer rowing romance called See You At The Finish Line, set against the backdrop of the Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race. I did an event at Cambridge Waterstones last night which was attended by several LGBTQ+ rowers who mentioned how excited they were to learn of this book's existence, so I thought I'd do some outreach to your community. It is currently published in the UK and set to be published in Australia in August and the US and Canada in September, but is already available in many countries either on import or Kindle.   I will be reaching out to various queer rowing organisations, but hope you are happy for me to share this news here! The book has been called "a triumph" by Publishers Weekly, while Kirkus Reviews said "This sweet, slow-burn romance will appeal to readers who loved Red, White & Royal Blue, but the dynamic setting and crisp banter in Hammett’s impressive debut are totally his own. A swoony, unputdownable story"   I rowed myself at school including on the Thames and at Henley and still keep it up on the erg, so I hope you find the book accurate enough in its portrayal of rowing!