The Centenary Head of the River Race

Mar 28, 2026

Maintaining its record of being one of the few clubs that have competed in every official Head of the River Race since its inception, the club’s first eight completed the traditional championship course from Mortlake to Putney in this centenary year in a time of 18 min. 48.9 sec, climbing from a start position of 247 to finish 109th. Leander retained the headship in a time of 16 min. 47.5 sec. and London won the Vernon Trophy for the fastest Tideway club, finishing third in a time of 17 min. 10.7 sec. The Vernon Trophy was donated to the race in 1954 by Karl “Bean” Vernon, sometime member and coach of Quintin Boat Club. The cup was made by melting down a number of Karl’s own rowing trophies.

A summary of the club’s results may be found on our Head of the River web page and full results are available at https://www.horr.co.uk/Result/.

To celebrate the race’s centenary the race was live-streamed on YouTube and may be watched by following this link.

Quintin Seniors before their race today sitting on our “steps of champions”. The crew put in a strong first outing overtaking several boats with some nifty undercutting at Barnes Bridge. From top, left to right Hilary Cook, Elliott Kemp, Balthasar Issa, Joe Wolfin, Alex Miller, Oscar Bird, Gabriel Mahler, Mike Ewing, Will Bryant. Additional photographs of the crew may be found at https://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3731.

Related Posts

Complete Rowing Podcast

Complete Rowing Podcast

Quintin Boat Club member Ken Creighton continues to grow the Complete Rowing podcast, a show dedicated to sharing the stories, knowledge and personalities that make rowing such a unique sport. What began as a conversation-based rowing podcast has quickly developed...

read more
Hilda Mitchell Cup

Hilda Mitchell Cup

The races for the Hilda Mitchell Cup took place on Saturday afternoon with racing commencing at 3:30pm. The Hilda Mitchell Cup was originally the trophy for a private match between Quintin BC and our then next-door-neighbours Ibis RC, but with the demise of Ibis the...

read more
John Peters – Club President

John Peters – Club President

As well as Saturday being the occasion of Chiswick Amateur Regatta it was also the eightieth birthday of the club's president, John Peters, and to mark this significant milestone John invited club members and a number of his rowing and skiffing contemporaries to a...

read more