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Food for thought (28-10-22)

Jan may be well into his 80s, but he still likes pigeon sport and even wants to give it new impulses. He is an example, a voice, an activist and an optimist; doesn't want to be a voice crying in the wasteland of backsliding.
At the time, he was one of the first to want to use electronic clocks and with that he surprised us all. Are older people not stingy?

OTHERWISE

Jan is different. Still as healthy as a fish and acting like a young Rambo who defies new trends and realizes that they have the future who are preparing for it. "This summer I'll give you another sniff," he joked. Nobody laughed. Because everyone who knows Jan takes him seriously. When you hear him talk about the past, about the good pigeons he had, you get completely warm. Warm with humanity. Jan is wisdom and nostalgia.

A relief in a time when things have to move forward all the time, faster and more hectic and for some ‘pigeons’ is no longer a hobby but a tough sport in which there is no room for sentiments. All fanciers should be like Jan, you think.
Not that old, but just as wise and healthy.

WAIL

But unfortunately, too many are different. They feel more at home at the wailing wall.

- Piet, for example, was at his wits' end because his birds failed hopelessly in the races. They didn't look good either: loose necks, mucus, scratching, sneezing, 'not clean of head'. He had tried everything: changed lofts, bought other pigeons, given medicines, followed advice, but all in vain and now he considers stopping. "It's no fun like that."

- Sjef looks more devastated every year as the season progresses. He too 'flies like shit' while the pigeons of the neighbour perform fasntastic. He cannot believe his neighbour only has good pigeons and he only has bad pigeons. He also thinks about quitting.

- Janus talked about a 'funeral mood' in his club.

- Toon believes that you can forget about performing well these days if you have to work or can't force yourself to go on the road with your birds several times a week.

 TASK

The disappointment of all those people should not be underestimated.It is mainly non-performing fanciers who drop out, which means that the sport increasingly threatens to become 'among us' between the champs and the connection for beginners is becoming increasingly difficult.
A kind of 'we-feeling' as we knew it long ago has long since disappeared. That costs fanciers and watch out; fewer fanciers affects us all.

- We are becoming less interesting for sellers of food, baskets, clocks, pigeon lofts and so on. After all, less competition means a more expensive sport for all of us.

- It means that it hardly pays for vets to become proficient in pigeons.

- And less fanciers is not good for the pigeon magazine and pigeon site either! Advertisers will lose interest.  But the champions themselves have the greatest interest in a thriving sport. 

THE CHAMPIONS

They are rightly proud of a good result. But does it get through to them that they can continue to race well (and also sell pigeons!), as long as the less successful fellow sportsman continues to participate and extends the competition time due to his poor performance? If only the 'profs' remain, it is much more difficult to achieve good results. "No champions without losers." 

IMPOSSIBLE

The difference between great results and complete failure is a matter of quality, of form, of guidance, of effort and the loft!

- There are many examples of people who started to play well, which gave them even more ambition, and who then built a beautiful new loft but alas. In the new fancy loft  the old level was never reached again. Remember Eddie Janssen. Or Huyskens van Riel. After the war they destroyed the races, a beautiful new accommodation was built, but after that the performances were never as before.

- How often do you hear fanciers who have several lofts, being surprised that the pigeons in one loft fly much better than in the other?

- And how often do you hear and read that pigeons in one loft perform better in the spring while they have to wait in another loft until it gets warmer? 

IGNORANT

The problem of many fanciers is that they do not see 'it'.

- They fail to notice that the pigeons have no form, they continue to play and the pigeons get even more out of shape.

- They don't realize that their loft is bad. They don't feel that draft, that lack of oxygen, that oppressive heat.

- Or they think that pigeons that have no good shape are sick. They then use a large number of caliber antibiotics to tackle non-existing diseases. The inevitable consequence is that the valley into which they fall becomes even deeper and getting out of it even more difficult. 

In this old loft the birds from Eddy Janssens performed real well.

TO ASK

I can't stand it when the failing sports partner is laughed at or ridiculed. Then I get a murderous haze over me, but I don't say anything, don't have the guts to raise my voice and call that taunting sportsman to order.
I know, bottling it up isn't good, it might give you stomach ulcers, but I am who I am.Many 'failing' fellow sportsmen spend money and energy in remedies to make the pigeons fly faster. Because they suspect the champions of doing nothing else.
The phenomenon is as old as pigeon sport itself. In the heyday of the Janssens, also eyebrows were raised at their good performance.
If you tell such a 'failing' fancier that his birds probably lack quality and that good birds can often be obtained at low price from smaller fanciers from their own region, they will start to nod and only spring up when the names of medicines are mentioned.

ADVICE

That failing fancier must be retained and that can be done by helping him. The most appropriate persons are the champions. By council or a couple of eggs. Just the idea of having pigeons from that good player, the new hope already motivates.
Of course the champion doesn't have to play Santa Claus. But sayings that one does not want to get beaten by one's own pigeons are stupid.If a gift would be a waste because the fellow sportsman is not a good handler then the champ does not have to fear it.
Keeping such a man in the sport is therefore a matter of self-interest. Sometimes a champion claims in a report 'to have secrets but not to reveal them'.
What kind of suckers are those to me. Not just because I don't believe in (his) secrets, what's do you think is on the mind of novice fanciers when they read something like that? If you think you have secrets, better keep your mouth shut! Then you do not make a fool of yourself if results get less.

 

 The olf loft of world famous Huyskens van Riel. At that time in Belgium alone
were 200,000 fanciers.