‘I love the creating the true pedigrees, that give birth to offspring who then also go and win races. You get to know them all, and it’s a great feeling when you see them come in from a long race.’
Not as many birds are making it back, though. 2012 was one of the hardest years on record for the sport, with 20,000 pigeons going missing. They have been hit by a triple whammy. According to Stewart, the sun’s behaviour has changed. Solar activity has increased to a level that hasn’t been seen for a thousand years. Its poles have switched for the first time in 11 years, and the resultant unseasonal weather has confused some birds.
Then there are birds of prey. Their population has been booming to such an extent that they have been moving into towns and cities where most racing pigeons are kept. Some have nested near to this free food source and even preyed on the pigeons in their own lofts. ‘It’s been an incredibly tough year,’ mourned Stewart. ‘To see 20 years of hard work disappear in a hawk attack is very upsetting, and it is driving people away from the sport.’ The main diet of a peregrine falcon is racing pigeon, while sparrow hawks will join the feast if the supply of songbirds is running out.
According to the RPRA, when a sparrow hawk attacks a flock of racing pigeons, it’s not just over for the one it choses for lunch, but the other pigeons will panic and scatter and their homing instincts are destroyed. Pigeon fanciers are bird lovers, so they insist they have nothing against the birds of prey, but they want help in protecting their sport. There used to be around 120,000 pigeon fanciers in the UK. Today there is half that number, with 45,000 association members. They are now working on ways to reduce raptor attacks. One is a £32,000 project at Lancaster University to develop ways of deterring the birds of prey. It may be in the future that pigeons carry bells or wear sequins, to make them less appealing.
The sport is now on a mission to get new people owning racing pigeons. The RPRA has started sponsoring keen youngsters to enter a pigeon in the name of their school. They want newcomers, like seven-year-old Heather Davies, Jeremy’s daughter, to get hooked. ‘I like the white ones, they’re quite pretty,’ she explained as she reached across the loft to prize her favourite from its perch. ‘I love them coming home at the end of the race and once I came fifth. My friends think it’s really cool that I am involved in the racing.’
I was invited to see the attraction too. I picked a bird called Louise who had recently won a race from France and was in top international form. I also thought it would appeal to my Breakfast colleague Louise Minchin, who would be on the sofa on the Saturday when the piece went out. I helped load the birds into a basket before they were taken to a table to be electronically recorded, ready for the race. Then it was into a car for a short journey into the picturesque Malvern Hills. I was allowed a quick pep talk with Louise through the slightly ajar lid of the basket. ‘Just turn left at the trees, keep out of the wind and head in a straight line and think of what you did to the rest on the way back from France’ were my words of wisdom, as Louise fidgeted and looked away. It didn’t seem quite the right moment for the Sir Alex Ferguson hairdryer treatment.
Then I stepped back with the other hopeful trainers and held my breath for the liberation: the moment when the birds are released. The door to the basket flipped down and for a second, nothing. Then one bird – but not Louise – stepped tentatively into the sunshine. A quick look to the right and to the left, and having given the signal that it was safe to go, the leader was followed into the sky by the whole flock. A sweeping kite of grey and white was swallowed up by the blue and within seconds they were dots above the trees, veering off to the right at incredible speed. The average speed they get up to is 60 miles per hour, but they have been recorded doing 110 mph, with the wind behind them in Australia.
In reality we would never have made it back to the loft in time to see the even the slower birds finish this five-mile race. It is a sprint for them, a race for the Usain Bolts of the pigeon world. So the birds were released for a second time, and this time, in the race that mattered, I waited the whole time at the finish. I got the call to say they were on their way. Silence descended over the loft as we anxiously watched the skies.
Within minutes of them taking off, they suddenly came into view, a flying carpet of feathers circling the trees, getting lower and lower before a group of them started to descend towards the loft. Cries of ‘come on!’ had punctured the vacuum. ‘That’s it, Louise!’ – I joined the clamour, pretending that I could tell she was in the breakaway group.
She was, as it happened, but this is where it can be interesting, and where your skills as a trainer are really tested. The pigeon has to cross the line and actually enter the loft if it’s to claim the prize. Yet Louise decided to rest on top of her home along with three others. They were sunbathing, having arrived in the leading group. This can happen, even after they’ve travelled hundreds of miles, and races can be lost and won in these few critical moments. £20,000 can be gone in an instant and so trainers like Jeremy rattle buckets and use whistle and voice commands to coax their birds over the final few inches. This is where experience counts and I didn’t have any. My calls to Louise just seemed to vex her. She eventually followed in ninth. Even though I had followed the advice and not fed her before the race, she still had no sense of urgency when it mattered.
I had seen what a lottery this sport can be, with a twist at the end that you don’t get in any other sport. Imagine Frankel stopping to eat some grass or to admire the view a couple of lengths from the winning post. Punters would be tearing their hats into pieces.
It can even happen in the biggest race in the world, the Million Dollar race in Sun City in South Africa. As the name suggests, one million dollars is given to the winner. In some parts of the world like China where the sport has really taken off, some birds have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds. In Europe the highest price paid was €300,000. The sport has become big business and yet for a tenner, anyone of us can still get involved.
For more information of the sport and if you want to join Her Majesty the Queen and become the owner of a racing pigeon (Her Royal Highness has a loft at Sandringham) then visit the website of the RPRA at www.rpra.org
What’s more if you find a stray pigeon in the garden with a ring around its leg, it will be a racing one. It may be resting, but if it stays and looks lost, then get in touch with the RPRA via the website or via twitter on @pigeonracinguk and they can find its owner.
That’s it for this chapter on our sporting animal friends, but bigger creatures also feature later in the book when we focus on unusual sports from around the world.
These are sports which bring families together: to get all of us playing and to make sport more inclusive. Many of the activities featured have been created since I started my Saturday series and some have been invented by crossing two existing sports together. If you want to know how to play the love child of rugby and golf, read on. Others may be more traditional activities which are great for all ages, and these are the sports I have picked out which I found to be most family-friendly.
A NEW SPORT IS BORN
Strange noises were coming from the barn. A whirring, a bang, a thwack – and then silence. The door creaked open and a man in brown overalls, with hair styled by shock, stumbled into the sunshine, blowing at his hands, as the last flicker of flame retreated into his gloves. His face was speckled with the charcoal, sweat and toil that you might associate with his work as a blacksmith, but there were no horses today. A broad grin beamed through the vanishing smoke: it was more than just a smile of satisfaction that the fire was out.
This grin quickly realised its ambition to be a smile, and was then knighted into unbridled euphoria. For this was a eureka moment that could make this man’s family life bearable again. He reached back into the barn to fetch a wooden ball, a four-pronged metal arch and a giant wooden hammer. This was his new baby, and