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International Front Runners Chooses New President

14 Dec 2019 14:08 | Anonymous

FGG member organization International Front Runners (IFR) is proud to announce the election of its new President Chris Rauchle, a member of Sydney Frontrunners and the long-time IFR Australia, Asia Pacific Regional Representative.


Chris Rauchle with the Sydney Frontrunners


Chris Rauchle running alongside the Sydney Opera House

Chris takes over from Danny Luong, who represented IFR at the Paris Gay Games and fostered a landmark partnership with Brooks Running. Danny will continue to oversee the Brooks / IFR scholarship program and we thank him for his service as president of IFR and his continuing involvement. Of note is that Chris is the first President of IFR from outside the United States, which highlights that the fast-growing family of 113 LGBTQ+ running clubs on 5 continents is now comprised of a majority of non-U.S. clubs.


Chris Rauchle is a 52 year old IT Project Manager originally from Queensland he has been living in Sydney, New South Wales for 30 years.

He has been running seriously for 15 years. Taking it up as part of triathlon, he found that with the right shoes and enough spare time he could run very much farther than his original distance of 400 meters around his local park. Working his way up from 5k to the half marathon in a series of races in Sydney he eventually took on his first marathon and now enjoys running this distance although he will never win any races. As a side effect of diet and exercise (go figure!) he lost 20kgs (40lb) after taking up running regularly in 2004 and enjoys the time running alone, with the Sydney Frontrunners, or with his "Red Dog" Kelpie, Jessie, in the outdoors when running around his local park, Centennial Park. This is the park the Sydney Frontrunners use for their regular runs.

Having been involved with the Sydney LGBTQI+ community for 30 years (almost as long as Sydney Frontrunners has been around) Chris has been the Sydney Frontrunners webmaster and been on the Sydney Frontrunners committee in various roles. He has project-managed the charity Little Black Dress Run for five years which has raised up to $54,000 annually for children living with HIV+ and Youth programs. He has been the Asia/Pacific representative for International Frontrunners for four years.

Chris is interested in growing the organisation in Asia, South America, and Africa. He has visited the cities with Frontrunners clubs in Australia, New Zealand and Japan several times over the last few years for work and pleasure. Not wanting to wait for the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia, he and his now husband, John, were married in Wellington, New Zealand in 2015, another city with a vibrant Frontrunners club.

When the opportunity to be the first President outside of North America presented itself, he leapt at the chance to show the truly global nature of our community of LGTBQI+ runners where it is possible to share good fellowship and exercise in more than one hundred cities around the world.

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