Van der Mescht loft strikes twice from Willowmore

IN the world of pigeon racing on the Border it is every fancier’s dream to win a Border Homing Union (BHU) race and last Saturday Johan van der Mescht of Queenstown did just that – not once but twice.

Both races, flown over a distance of 400km from Willowmore – the Main series and the yearling event – went to Van der Mescht’s loft.

It was a day for the Queenstown fliers to savour as their lofts annexed all the top 10 positions in both events.

Van der Mescht’s winning bird in the Main series race posted an average flying speed of 86km/h with Mossie Roodt’s first arrival taking second spot.

Hilton Adams achieved a memorable result in taking the next three places, while Ashley le Grange and Dale Manthe & Sons each managed a pair of top-10 positions.

In the yearling event, Van der Mescht’s first bird achieved a speed of 84km/h, just shading Charl du Plooy’s pigeon by 0.1 km/h. Van der Mescht joined a quartet of Queenstown lofts which each picked up a brace of top-10 placings – along with Du Plooy, Tiaan Landman and Roodt.

In previous seasons coastal lofts have usually had the beating of their inland counterparts in races on the west route. However, this was not the case as the top speeds achieved by coastal pigeons were on average five km/h slower.

The EL Combine Main series race was taken by the Jacobs’ loft with Charles Benn winning the Combine yearling race. Both these lofts fly under the Abbotsford Flying Club banner.

An interesting observation which underlined the closeness of the competition was the fact that the Combine top-100 result sheet took under 15 minutes to be filled, compared to the 48 minutes it took to close out the BHU sheet.

See Results on page 24