Thoughts when it goes wrong by Les J Parkinson
Why do we lose so many pigeons in the longer races, we didn’t used to many years ago?
I was talking to a local fancier who lost 46 birds in two National races, and oddly enough we agreed on both accounts regarding these races.
The first NFC race was somewhat of a bad race because there were a lot of pigeons missing and it was early in the season when fanciers cannot afford such losses. In all fairness to the NFC they held a meeting and discussed the matter, even so the feeling was that it was the wrong decisions to liberate that caused the losses. This was more than likely down to the weather in France, they didn’t get the start pigeons need when it comes to racing home.
The other race that we were discussing was the Tarbes race when the birds had a tough time and those birds that came home, especially on the winning day were all game birds and up for tough competition, just what we need in the loft, “When the going gets tough the tough get going”
When sending to such races we all like to think we have prepared them for the job in hand and do expect them to return. But realistically in our own hearts we know that most fanciers are not going to get all their birds on the winning day from such races. As we were discussing this race, it was Thursday after Tarbes and my friend still had no arrivals from the race and this was one of the races he was aiming for all season. Even the shorter flyers were not getting them so there was little chance of even 10% making it into the North West. In fact, according to my out of date calculations, good job we have a calculator, we had just over 3% returns in section L and about 8% in the whole of the race, these are from the figures on the web site. Many more will no doubt have returned they always do; they are destined to return to their home as we all like to do.
That out of the way what did we agree on, well the National did everything right for the Tarbes race, but the conditions were against them. When those conditions are against you then you have nowhere to hide.
Yes, we know by Wednesday night there were only 150 on the website but, probably more where fanciers had already clocked and saw no reason to clock anymore. There were only 1,879 birds away for this race, so when you look at bad races from the Grand National, percentage wise there have probably been worse ones when the entries were much higher.
When you are at the top people are looking and for this race, I was asked on several occasion’s “What happened to Mark Gilbert not clocking” an easy answer, he didn’t send.
