Open honours for Abbotsford fancier

THE stop-start Border Homing Union 2015 pigeon racing programme continued recently when just under 1 200 pigeons were released from Ixopo to tackle the 370km home.

Local fanciers have had to contend with gaps in the programme after the official pigeon transporter was involved in an accident a number of weeks back.

This necessitated the use of a borrowed pigeon transporter and an accompanying reduction in the number of pigeons per race allocated to each fancier.

The objective of flying pigeon races from the east (Transkei and KwaZulu-Natal), introduced in the current season, has been achieved in that the flying speeds posted have been a truer reflection of the pigeons’ abilities.

Also, the race distances are far more equitable on this route than from the west or north, in that the country birds are flying distances comparable to their coastal counterparts.

In the Open race from Ixopo (for pigeons of any age) Andre Swart of the Abbotsford Flying Club “dropped” two birds together to take the top two positions (73.3km/h). Twenty seconds back was Northerns’ Peter Webster, who saw his first arrival post a speed of 73.2km/h.

With the majority of the birds homing to East London lofts it was expected that the larger pack would “pull” the country birds with them.

This duly ensued and the flying speeds for the country fanciers fell off considerably as the country birds made their way inland. First country pigeon clocked was flown by Bossie Boshoff of King William’s Town at 67km/h with the first Queenstown arrivals 5km/h slower.

The yearling race, released simultaneously, saw a winning speed of 73.4km/h.

It was Brian Richter of Abbotsford whose first arrival pipped that of Squeaky Nel of Northerns into second spot by a scant three seconds. Third position went to the loft of Ristow and Jamieson of Northerns.

The first country arrival was at the loft of Bentley Dickson in King with a speed of 65km/h.