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:
“[Veterans] feel disappointed, not about the 1914-1918 war but about this war. They liked that war, it was a nice war, a real war a regular war, a commenced war and an ended war. It was a war, and veterans like a war to be a war. They do.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“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)
“Better to cheat an old grey head than to trick a small child.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)