"The Road to Cologne": Bob Lubarsky

Here's an extract of a profile of a Gay Games VIII athlete. Read the full profile in Living in the Queer Times HERE:

1998, the Gay Games in Amsterdam: The gold just four years before was a highlight; at the same time, there were also some knocks. Foremost of which, my tenure was denied. Having no particular reason to stay where I was, in ’96 I moved to where I wanted to be – Germany. I picked Cologne, mostly because it’s their gay capital. Upon arrival, I asked around for the local gay wrestling club, only to find there wasn’t one. Figuring that was the end of my wrestling career, I set about setting up life there anyway. When I heard about the Games in Amsterdam, just two hours away, it was two hard to say no. And if there was no gay wrestling group for me to get some training with, that just meant I had to join a non-gay one.

The closest club to home was the Ringer Club Ehrenfeld, and it was my childhood nightmare. Wrestling is mostly a working-class sport, so the guys in the club included an electrician, a truck driver, even a thief who had spent time in jail; I was a former college professor. They were mostly around 20; I was pushing 40. There were Germans and Turks there, an occasional Iraqi or Iranian; I’m a Jew. And they were straight, and I’m gay. There was some adjustment we all had to go through at first. In the end, though, what started as just a sideshow for me, just a place to get some training for the Games, ended up eclipsing the Games in importance. The Ehrenfelders were part of the league system there, and I eventually wrestled on the team in the competitions,

helping them rise into the next higher league. In the course of time, the confidence it gave me and the fun I had led me to be the one to found within Janus, the city’s gay sports club, the wrestling group.