Gay and Lesbian Organisation for Racing and Yachting

 

glory5_sm_3dGLORY exists to provide a voice for gays and lesbians in the sport of sailing and to encourage and assist individual sailors, clubs and teams.

The Gay and Lesbian Organisation for Racing and Yachting (GLORY) is a global organisation dedicated to promoting, co-ordinating, and supporting gay and lesbian sailing and racing around the world. GLORY represents teams and organisations world-wide with over 2000 members. We exist to assist individual sailors, clubs and teams in promoting the sport of sailing among lesbians and gays.

We do this through regatta co-ordination and promotion.

We support a wide variety of sailing goals, from the highly competitive to the recreational. GLORY provides a sense of community for gay and lesbian sailors, no matter where they live or with whom they sail. Among our members are those with gay team-mates, straight team-mates and no team-mates (single-handed) and racing everything from ocean-going yachts to small dinghies. We also support Paralympic sailing as part of our Outreach program.

We maintain a global network of sailors and clubs, and can help to provide contacts for away regattas, training camps and friendly sailing when away from home.  GLORY successfully lobbied for the inclusion of sailing in the bids for the 2006 (Chicago), 2010 (Cologne) and  2012 Gay Games in Cleveland+Akron, Ohio and will continue to do so for future Gay Games as well as other LGBT multisports events.

As an example of our work, the 2012 Gay Games Regatta was close to being cancelled when GLORY was asked by the host organisation to help to put on the event – we found local contacts who knew about sailing, created a proposal for the event and negotiated with the host sailing club to prove the benefits of hosting the event, found sources of boats, sourced sail manufacturers and helped to create a package for the benefit of both participants and the organisers.

Key activities include

  • Representing sailing at the Federation of Gay Games – GLORY is a full member organisation of the the FGG and representative serve on a number of sports and organisational committees.
  • Lobbying the Gay Games bid cities to include sailing
  • Assisting in regatta operations – finding venues, boats, sponsors, regatta officials and volunteers
  • Sanctioning and promoting regional regattas
  • Providing a forum for community and information exchange
  • Assisting individual sailors, crews and clubs
  • Developing sailing for gay disabled and HIV+ sailors
  • Encouraging regions where few clubs exists such as Africa, South America and Asia
  • Representing gay sailing to the public and to international sailing bodies such as the International Sailing Federation and International Foundation for Disabled Sailing