Form and so (05-05-26)
Shape and so on (05-05-26)
I mention X, a great champion, but rather a good acquaintance.
Because friends? Real ones you can count on, who can be silent and talk at the right time and to the right people?
They are scarce.
Well, that 'good acquaintance', that great champion, always said:
'When you see how many mistakes I still make, I wonder about others.
And then I only talk about the mistakes that I know I am making.
NOMINATED
In my area, in 2026, people only race for fun. The money has all but disappeared from the sport and championships have never interested fanciers here. Certainly not national championships. Because fanciers are not stupid and realize all too well how relative they are because of so much difference in competition and no equal opportunities. Take April 25th for arguments sake.
Beautiful weather with a weak to moderate northeast wind everywhere. The speeds of the winners varied from 1,400 to 1,280 mpm. The competition duration of barely 10 minutes to half an hour.
You saw these enormous differences both in Belgium and in Nederland.
To become a National Champion it is best to live in a region where the competition is poor, so of little importance. To get better pigeons, it is best to race against strong competition.
DIFFERENT
Everyone enjoys the sport in their own way. Do people like to play for cups, trophies? If you enjoy it, keep doing it. Realize that the National Champion in Belgium was right when he said, with his 6 prizes/points: 'Not the man who races best becomes champion, but the one who was most lucky when nominating his birds.'
Some are indeed more skilled than others.
Once I was also someone 'who knew', but that was only an appearance, another time I was laughed at because almost all birds won a prize except the nominated.
After my marriage ‘I knew it’.
I wasn't even the best in the club at the time, but I did become Provincial Champion against thousands of fanciers at the time.
How was that possible? I had three really good pigeons that rarely missed and a series of others that rarely won a prize. The biggest idiot could have put the prize winners on top of the entry sheet before the race.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE
When, a long time ago, I had my first three nominated from Chartres (S-National) at the fifth prize and my two first nominated won the first series two NATIONAL from Orleans, ‘I knew it too’, so it was said in a loft report. I was a connoisseur.’
Barely two years later I had 10 or more good birds.
Every race I put another bird on top but it was one of those years when you can't do any good. To win three quarters of the pigeons in the prizes and not the two or three first nominated? It happened to me more often.
To become national champion some find it is best to have 3 supers and the rest is junk.
I call a super a pigeon of which you can say 'it wins the first today' in good weather and that lives up to that.
DON'T GO OUTSIDE
That's how I remember those two blue cocks.
They repeatedly kept each other from the first prize (in the club).
There boxes were next to each other and they hated each other as evidenced by their sometimes bloodied heads.
Halfway through the season, something strange happened.
When I let the pigeons out, they refused to go outside.
'Because they are afraid that the other will take possession of their box, pure attachment to their own territory, extra motivated,' I thought.
And they got, as 2 first nominated, some extra crosses on the pool sheet when that flying day came with 'pigeon weather'.
All my birds won a good prize except... the two first nominated!
And if pigeons miss, fanciers are resourceful in looking for excuses.
I once wrote down a number of them that I heard of. Unbelievable. From 'painting the house' to 'forgetting to turn off the light at night'.
Those two cocks did train but only after I threw them outside.
Lack of form was the only explanation and I had learned my lesson.
Pigeons that don't spontaneously pop out? I don't kid myself anymore. All too often I they let me down.
AND AGAIN
I once had my 'good old'. A pigeon you could rely on.
Until the year in which it slowed down a bit. From the first flight it disappointed. There was nothing wrong with the pigeon.
Such an experienced pigeon that suddenly doesn't perform anything anymore?
"How is it possible?" I wondered and did something stupid again.
Because the bird had previously proven that it could handle the distance, I decided to basket him for a long distance race.
He arrived minutes late in the middle distance races that year, now it was not minutes, not hours but two days!
Pigeons that have proven to have class in previous years and now fail to 'send them to the long distance' is tempting fate.
STUPID
When pigeons prove through their performances that they have form and class, a lot is possible.
Then 'Middle Distance pigeons’ can be raced at long distance.
'The good old' had proven to have class but, now also proven, no form. It's better to keep such at home.
When you handle a pigeon you have to be shocked how good it looks.
Early in the season I hear fanciers who perform less also say, 'form will come when it gets warmer'. It rarely comes. The importance of form can be seen in the national races for youngsters. The stars are almost without exception fanciers who also performed well before. There are almost no surprises.
FLYING
I also remember that race when all my youngsters were in time apart from the 3 that were on eggs. Such a thing cannot be a coincidence and it was not.
I always let my youngsters out early in the morning that year. Consequence: Those three had not flown for a whole week, because they were on a nest in the morning, they had not even been outside!
It brings us to one of the benefits of playing with separate genders. Then something like that can't happen because they train. Pigeons that don't want to leave the loft and don't train are hopeless pigeons! Both young and old.