The Vesta Veterans International Eights Head of the River Race is a rowing race held annually on the River Thames over the Championship Course. The direction in which the event is raced changes from year to year, dependent on the time of the tides: some years it is raced from Mortlake to Putney other years it will go the other way. It is open to veteran (also known as masters) eights, who race in categories determined by the average ages of the eight rowers. The race always takes place on the day following the Head of the River Race.
It is organised by Vesta Rowing Club.
Famous quotes containing the words veterans, eights, head, river and/or race:
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Time has an undertaking establishment on every block and drives his coffin nails faster than the steam riveters rivet or the stenographers type or the tickers tick out fours and eights and dollar signs and ciphers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse- nervousness, ass-stubbornness, and camel-malice—with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset, and when they can do exactly as they please, they are very hard to drive.
Oh, England. Sick in head and sick in heart,
Sick in whole and every part,
And yet sicker thou art still
For thinking that thou art not ill.”
—Thomas Henry Anonymous (1825–95)
“but we wish the river had another shore,
some further range of delectable mountains,”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)