Prizes

Special Memorial and Other Awards

A number of special awards are given to category winners, as well as to the fastest university crew entered in each year. More details coming soon.

Stan Jeffery Memorial Trophy Universities Challenge

For some time the organising committee of the Head of the Yarra has been looking for ways to honour in a lasting way, the vision and foresight of Stan Jeffery in creating the Head of the Yarra event. Stan passed away in 2003 after a lifelong interest and service in rowing both as a competitor and administrator.

Following Stan’s involvement with the Olympic games in 1956, he recommended to the Hawthorn Rowing Club Committee that it should promote a long distance rowing event on the Yarra based on the English “Tideway Head” and so the Head of the Yarra was born.

The first event was in 1957 with just 14 crews. Today it has grown to over 170 eight-oared crews with entries from New Zealand and many Australian States.

The rowing fraternity has come to regard the 8.6km time-trial as event not to be missed in the annual rowing calendar. In fact there are many who have competed 20 times or more and are still “fronting up each year”.

A unique feature of the Head of the Yarra is the mixing of all crews that compete in the 18 race categories. In this way Olympians, Masters and School Crews of both sexes are all intermingled with the results not known until the last crew finishes the event. This builds a high degree of anticipation at the medals presentation ceremony.

To add further to this anticipation, a Stan Jeffery Memorial Trophy has been established that was awarded for the first time in 2004 as the Universities Challenge Trophy for the fastest University Boat Clubs in the event.

The trophy itself is rather unique as trophies go and has been chosen to symbolise the creative thinking of Stan Jeffery and the linkage with Universities.

The trophy is a bronze cast of Augustine Rodin’s The Thinker. Rodin (1840-1917) was a French sculpturer credited with bringing monumental public sculpture into the modern era.

At the turn of the century, Rodin explained to a journalist that the inspiration for his conception of The Thinker, was “that of a naked man crouched on a rock against which his feet are contracted, his fist pressed against his teeth, he sits lost in contemplation, his fertile thoughts slowly unfalled in his imagination. He is not a dreamer; he is a creator”.

This then seemed to be an appropriate perpetual trophy to honour the memory of Stan Jeffery, the creator of the Head of the Yarra.