Pigeon racing in front by a beak to get spectator sport off to flyer
FOR decades, their fanciers in flat caps have described them as “athletes of the sky”. Now even loftier status awaits the racing pigeon: at 10am tomorrow 4,000 of them take flight as the first spectator sport to return.
Road passengers might even catch a glimpse of the action from the M1 if they squint closely enough at the skies. Along virtually the same 70-mile route from Leicester, the Barnsley Federation of Racing Pigeons will do battle. More has been made about horse racing and snooker’s immediate return as lockdown is eased, but it is retired miner John Greenshield who earns the bragging rights by three hours as the first organiser to get his sport fully under way. Fishing, the 72-year-old suggests, doesn’t count.
“We get locked down for everything – bird flu, swine flu, everything, so corona wasn’t going to stop us once it was safe,” he said. “There’s been a lot done with the royal association and with Government and Defra. We’re happy to go. We’re self-isolating, doing everything they need.”
Usually the start of a race can draw a decent crowd, but tomorrow at Leicester Racecourse just two men will be on hand – the driver of the pigeon wagon, and an assistant in convoy.
Pigeons may cover a good distance but, Mr Greenshield acknowledges it is possible a small group of socially distanced enthusiasts may try to gather at a vantage point elsewhere.
Mr Greenshield, who has been racing since he was six, hopes his pigeons have the edge – he has been monitoring their weight throughout lockdown.
“They’re the athletes of the sky and you have to treat them so,” he said.
“I’ve prepped mine as if I was racing next week the whole way through. I haven’t had to fuss them or diet them, and everything. I don’t let them get fat. They get their quota.”
Pigeon racing has been taking place, traditionally in largely working class areas of England and Wales, since 1881, but it is also popular with the Royal family – a bird belonging to the Queen won a race in 1990. However, the sport has been steadily declining overall, shrinking by about five per cent a year.
It has also been threatened by previous health alerts, including in 2007, when Parliament banned pigeons racing from the mainland of Europe to Britain because of the risk of bird flu.
“I get the sense it’s a dying sport and this won’t have helped this year,” says Mr Greenshield. “There’s not many youngsters coming into it now. It was more when the pits were open. I was a miner for 41 years. A lot of them were like that. They used to call us cloth caps with whippets and pigeons. It’s not been easy arranging it. I think we are doing it right, but who knows if there will be another spike. Nobody knows yet.”
Travelling at about 1,500 yards a minute, the first racers should have covered the 70 miles and be back in their lofts in 75 to 80 minutes, well before the horses are in the paddock for the first race at Newcastle at 1pm.
Explaining how he trains pigeons to fly such distances, Mr Greenshield explains: “You start them as babies, three or four month old. You start them at four miles, move them on to 10, and once you get them to 20, they’ve got the know-how. They do about 55 to 57 miles per hour.”
Despite the sport’s diminishing numbers of participants, its top athletes are still prized. “They buy them in China for £100,000 – some remarkable money,” Mr Greenshield adds. “You won’t see much of that round my way.”