The 2011 Scullers Head Winners

The 2011 Vesta Scullers Head took place on Saturday, 3rd December. Vesta is the only club that single-handedly organises not one, but two of the major Tideway Heads – a feat made possible because of members and friends of the club members. Happily not put off by the cold conditions in 2010, we had 528 entries for the 2011 race, with 26 of our own Vesta entries. The event ran without (major) incident with only two crews “DNF”.

Once the dust had settled post-race, and event chairman Sinéad Hayes recovered from mental exhaustion, the winners were celebrated at a prizegiving held on 13th December. Sinéad once again pulled out all the stops to cater for the event in true rower style – i.e. fantastic canapés in vast volumes.

Tommy Thompson and event chairman Sinéad Hayes with winners Adam Freeman-Pask (Imperial) and Imogen Walsh (London RC) and their prizes

Event winners came from all over the UK and from far beyond. Bragging rights for best Tideway club were shared between Tideway Scullers and London Rowing Club with seven wins each. The fastest man and woman were both GB lightweights, Adam Freeman-Pask (21:09.0) and Imogen Walsh (22:35.9). In addition to the medals awarded by event, recast from the original 1953 prize, the fastest men and women received an exquisite scale model sculpture of a single scull cast in pewter.

The Vesta Senior Women’s Squad succeeded in three events, with lightweight Holly De Gay achieving the fastest time of all three despite starting at 521, when the sun was starting to set. The winners were as follows:

Two of Vesta’s winners, Kat Hedges and Holly De Gay, with Sinéad Hayes

Holly De Gay, W.IM3.LWT.1x (23:58.5)

Liz Crighton, W.IM2.1x (24:04.7)

Kat Hedges, W.MasA.1x (24:16.2)

For full results, please check out the Results Page by clicking here.

Even more hotly contested are the Vesta exclusive events, also known as “Dick’s Bar Prizes” (two bottles of cava and glory untold). The categories and winners for these events were:

1st man home: Jamie Halliday
1st male Master: Barry Clarke (… faster than Jamie after adjusting for handicap)
1st woman home: Holly De Gay
1st female Master: Kat Hedges

It is understood that the Cava was appropriately consumed and enjoyed following the Vesta Annual Dinner… an event for which no website write-up is required!

Words and pictures by Martha Kelly.

IM18+ Pennant Winners (s - Kat Astley, Lara Brock, Caroline Newbury, Aga Siemiginowska, Emma Dyson, Kitty Lowings, Kathryn Clover, Kat Hedges, cox Jamie Wooler)

The Vesta senior squads were out in force at a sunny Wallingford Head on Sunday 27th November, with two men’s VIIIs, four women’s VIIIs and four women’s IVs in action. With an exciting set of bends halfway down the course, all coxes and steers did a great job to bring home all equipment intact, albeit occasionally decorated with small amounts of shrubbery. The squads gained quality race experience, with all finding better pace by the second division, having enjoyed rather more sedate rhythms in division one. The women’s squad recorded two wins in the afternoon, in IM1 VIII and Sen 4-. The W.IM1 VIII enjoyed overtaking their competitors so much with their new-found race pace that they took a detour into the bushes through that infamous bend, enabling the rest of the category to catch up; before storming through the field again to bringing home the pennant. In the W.Sen 4- event, the race was on between two Vesta crews. Having despatched Reading University early on, it was up to the mighty lighties to maintain the leading position to the finish line. The final verdict was a win to the lighties with a margin of half a second – thank heavens for Wallingford’s precision timing, eh?! We’ll call that a very well-matched set of performances.

With big competition in the senior and elite categories from competitors that (sometimes literally) eclipsed the Vesta crews, all three boats finished with respectable times, even if they were placed (let’s be honest!) last in their categories. The elite pair of Kat Hedges and Martha Kelly finished 6th out of all the women’s pairs, in a close race (at one point four boats abreast) that was won by crew members of the GB under 23 women’s VIII. The senior pair of Sarah Wood and Alex Johnson were beaten by a strong City of Oxford crew, while the senior double of Kitty Lowings and Emma Dyson were beaten by the rather curious Leander combination of Debbie Flood (of GB fame) and a cox (sculling as opposed to coxing) – who themselves were beaten by a speedy London RC crew. As Kitty and Emma had only very recently come together as a crew, and were impeded during the race by a men’s double (chivalry, much?), their time was commendable.

The IM3 doubles event was, as usual, the largest women’s category and had two Vesta crews – sibling duo Lara / Vicky Brock and Athene McGregor-Macdonald / Natalie Demblon. The Brockmobile cranked out the fastest squad time of the day, finishing in an excellent fifth place in the category. Meanwhile another new combination, Hayley Beer and Anna Ven Den Berg in the IM2 pair, enjoyed their first race in a pair despite seasonal sniffles.

In Matt’s words this was a “voluntary, fun” head race, and at a mere 4k was a good afternoon out. The (presumably mandatory, not fun?) Fours’ Head is the next race for the squad, on the 5th November.

- Martha Kelly

The Vesta annual Big Breakfast will be held at the Vesta Bar after training on Saturday 24th September (probably around 11ish). This is the traditional Vesta way of kicking off the new season while helping raise money for the tea and toast which will sustain us during the long, cold, and hard winter. So please come, bring family and friends, and eat loads of yummy porridge, sausages and breakfast goodies.

The breakfast and training session will be followed by the annual 4′s Head Recce Bar Crawl. More details to follow, but suffice it to say that it will start around 2ish, and hit all the bars along the 4s Head course (i.e. Mortlake to Putney). Make sure to eat a big breakfast to line your stomaches for an afternoon of drinking which will bring us all back to the Vesta Bar…where beers buy boats!

Any questions, please get in touch with Ailsa or Alex

As the only person in the history of the event to actually enjoy 31 miles of non stop sculling, he was tipped as a favourite to come away with the coveted Novice 1x pot.

With standard mainland European doggedness Gianni did Vesta proud and did manage to secure victory in the Novice category with a good time of 04:10.59, many congratulations!

The mixed eights event saw a controversial win for the crew of six men and two women over three evenly matched crews. But as Caster Semenya has proved, gender is just something that’s written on your birth certificate. The focus then turned to boat-naming, where Trevor finally named four of the fleet of launches he has kindly purchased for the club over the years. Formerly affectionately known as 199, 299 and so on, they were baptised with a splash of champagne and dedicated to longstanding deceased Vesta members.

And so the fleet was named:

The celebration continued well into the night with the senior women’s long-awaited 90s party, featuring guest appearances from Ab Fab, Where’s Wally, Baywatch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pulp Fiction, The Matrix… all fuelled by copious amounts of Archers, blue WKDs and Bacardi Breezers. But it was all too much for some.

This was Vesta’s 18th appearance in a Henley Final; the full list is shown in the results section. Further coverage appeared in the Surrey Comet shortly afterwards.

Vesta’s second boat was entered in the Thames Challenge Cup. Despite a decisive win against Combined Services on Wednesday they were knocked out by favourites Tideway Scullers the following day. The crew of Alasdair Anderson, Rob Shaw, Josh McInerney, Mat Jozwiak, Laurence Manning, Alister Campbell, James Watts and Uinseann McSamhrain and cox Liz Head put in a solid performance and this result proves that a year of technical work and fitness training has brought the squad to a new level with great potential to go even further next year.

As usual, Vesta supporters were out in force and leading the famous ‘Remenham roar’ as our crews streaked past the club! Many thanks to all who turned up and we hope to see you all again next year for even more success and champagne on Paul Baldwin, our ever-generous chairman.