Alwyn Hill- Its all in the planning
There can be few serious pigeon men who haven’t heard of a little mealy racing machine called ‘Wing Down’ and his exploits out of Tarbes with the NFC at an eye watering 677 miles. This is the bird that put Alwyn Hill on the map and in the thoughts of likeminded distance men in Britain and on a more personal level gave justification to the approach adopted by Alwyn since his restart in 2006. The one clear focus for Alwyn upon restarting was to put together a family of birds that would tackle the extreme distance marathon races through to Barcelona International no small ask given that Alwyn races up in to Ilkeston in Derbyshire which is some distance from the soft, sandy beaches and rolling Downs of the South East which is the traditional haunt of the Barcelona specialists.
Alwyn Hill - The man with a plan
Alwyn is most certainly a thinker and as you will see from his approach to racing and breeding in this article no stone is left unturned. He loves to talk to pigeon men about all aspects of pigeons and will question you at depth about your own opinions, theories and approaches. The first time I visited Alwyn to drop off the COM for The German I was there for 6 hours and never actually handled a bird as we spent the time talking breeding, racing and pigeon health he clearly picked something up from me!! No need to thank me Alwyn.
I remember speaking to Alwyn when Wing Down scored his third top 10 open position and asking him of the cock would be stopped now, to which Alwyn seemed bemused at the very idea. He was a racing pigeon and was there to be raced and was he worried about losing him, yes he was but he believed that there were other birds in the team equal to him coming up behind. This is the bit that struck a chord with me, he had on his hands arguably the finest Tarbes pigeon ever to compete with The National Flying Club but he firmly believed that he had a few more just as good in the shed as well!!!, now to me that is a statement that takes confidence to make.
Alwyn has stated before that his aim is to have a loft full of Certificate Of Merit pigeons that he has bred and raced himself. Now, what you have to remember is that in a very good year the NFC will only ever have 2 of these to present across its entire membership, and it is often the case that there are none of these to present. I am offering this statistic to try and demonstrate the difficulty involved in winning one of these in your lifetime as a pigeon fancier, never mind wanting to collect a wall full. But bear in mind this, Alwyn did secure his first COM with Wing Down, then true to his aim he followed this up a couple of years later with a second COM that was won by The Black Cock, and this year has secured his third with his good red cock now by any definition or yard stick that is some measure of success.
The iconic photo of Wing Down hitting the trap
Now, its obvious that you just don’t become an overnight success at this level and nor do you stumble upon a top quality bird by just chucking coupe of birds together. There is history and planning behind all of this that has led Alwyn to this point. He first got started in pigeons as a 13 year old lad and flew his first few birds on an allotment to an old chicken shed that was repurposed as a pigeon loft. His dad then stepped in and built him a loft and then went about filling it with birds from everywhere. The first prize card that young Alwyn scooped (which he still treasures to this day) was a 4th prize from Harrogate with a 7 year old silver blue hen. This is a memory that he carries still to this day. By the time he was 19 and married he had stopped racing as his time was better put to use elsewhere.
The family moved to Swinderby in Lincolnshire in 1988 and a restart with pigeons was on the cards, and they began competing in 1992. Between then and 1999 Alwyn raced in partnership with his wife and they set records in sprint/ middle distance racing on the north road that remain to this day. It is fair to say that their team of Van Reet and Wildermeersch won everything that there was to win and did it in great style. At the end of the 1999 season they sold all the birds and moved back to Ilkeston. Alwyn then spent the next 5 years travelling the world and ticking things off his bucket list. It was when his health took a turn for the worst, with a diagnosis of a bone marrow disorder followed by one for diabetes and then 2 minor strokes that he realised he needed to turn things down a notch. Looking for something to do with his time and energy his thoughts turned to racing pigeons again, so the plans were set in motion in 2005 for a return to the sport.
As I said earlier his target was the ‘proper’ races at 600+ miles through to Barcelona at International level. He certainly did his homework and spent many months scouring the international results looking for consistent performing lofts that had a reputation for turning out a regular supply of multiple performing birds out of Barcelona, which for Alwyn is the pinnacle of racing. Interestingly, he was as interested in unearthing top drawer racing hens as well as cocks. After spending many nights researching through until 4 in the morning Alwyn came up with a short list of 30 lofts he decided he wanted to visit. Next stage was to make contact with these fanciers to arrange a visit, a process that wasn’t as straight forward as you would think as some of these fanciers did not speak much or any English, and also it was difficult to find contact details for some as they were not interested in publicity or promoting their performances. However, Alwyn is a man who is driven to succeed and he will tell you that winning is everything so the effort was put in to get the proper tools for the job and eventually the wheels were put in motion for a 2 week road trip across Belgium, Holland and Germany. During this time Alwyn visited many top lofts some well known and some well under the radar and as you can imagine he handled some real quality birds. By his own admission he bought until it hurt, and the amounts he spent on birds have passed in to pigeon folklore. What he was after was the performance birds themselves and if they weren’t available then he would buy children from them, always keeping in mind that it is horses for courses and that hopefully blood would count.
During his research Alwyn was particularly interested in sourcing the elite of marathon performance birds the Primus-inter-Pares pigeons, during the many miles travelled it was these that he was on the lookout for. For Alwyn they have something about them, that something special. Birds that are honoured with this award are not just multi performers but multi-performance pigeons at what is considered the best race in the world - the Barcelona International. Alwyn puts the birds with multi-performances from Barcelona on a pedestal. These are valued so highly, more than the actual winners themselves. These are the types of birds that he fell in love with, with the ability to exist in the basket for days on end then have the strength and courage to battle home time and time again. As he was about to find out this was to prove to be an expensive love affair. Reflecting back on Alwyns desire to have a loft full of COM winners, then the logical basis is Primus Inter Pares birds lets bear in mind that this award is for the best bird from Barcelona International over 5 consecutive years based on the highest winning co-efficient. The co efficient takes out of the equation wind, number of entries etc. and allows you to concentrate on the performance alone. This is not dissimilar to the COM that is awarded by The National Flying Club in terms of it is a reflection and reward for a string of top end performances put up by a pigeon in The Blue Riband race. Lets think about horses for courses and the tools for the job, and then we might start to realise why Alwyn has 3 COM’s in the bag since first dipping his toe in long distance racing in 2009- an average of 1 every 2 years.
A real depth of quality the first results of the plan working.
So, having spent money wisely and until he got nosebleeds, Alwyn assembled the raw materials back in Ilkeston and in 2007 the first round of young birds was weaned over on to the loft floor with very high expectations of them. Alwyn was confident that, having done his homework and applied his skills as a fancier, these young birds were bred for the job at hand and when the time came he would be entering these at Tarbes with every confidence. When these went there will be no "element of doubt" about whether they are bred to do the job, he knew they were. Whether they were good enough is another question!! But I was confident in knowing he will have done his bit. The only way to find out then is to send them. That’s where the talking stops and theories are put to the test. Mr Basket answers all the questions! Incidentally it was from this round that Wing Down emerged, so he must have been doing something right.
I think Alwyns approach is deceptively simple- pack the bird with multiple generations of performance birds and then test it at 600+ miles. At the moment he is into the 8th generation of putting proven 800 mile pigeons together to produce pigeons which he intends to conquer Barcelona with. Now read that again - that means EVERY generation consists of proven multi performance 800 mile performers tools for the job. Now, let’s not for one minute think that all these performance birds came to Ilkeston and started to churn out their like, for they didn’t. Alwyn will tell you that he got the best available and shook the riddle hard and long, the chaff fell by the wayside and a few good ones were left and these are showing their true worth. He continues this approach and has even gone so far as buying in young birds from top continental lofts and racing them before breeding of them this is how he has a COM winner with a German ring in his leg. Having sorted out the first wave of stock he has continued to add multi performance Primus birds when the opportunity arises and these are put in to the mix in the hope they will add an additional generation and contribute towards breeding birds that will be in the clock from Barcelona up in to Derbyshire.
So, how do we judge the success of the plan so far? Well, given Alwyn’s desire and drive to breed his own COM birds and using this as an improbable bench mark let’s look at some of the nuggets that have been unearthed. Firstly, the little man his self Wing Down - the first one to get his photo on the wall. To claim his COM his results were 2nd Open and 7th open the year Matt Rake won it with Indy. Then he was 1st Section, 4th open the year the Shackleton loft won it with Pennine Heights, and then he almost did the unthinkable and was 1st Section 2nd Open behind Mark Bulled who won the race with Legacy. He has now joined the small, elite stock team and is already showing his worth with 1st Open BICC St Vincent this year being a grandchild. This little fella is very much central to Alwyn’s plans for the future and a large percentage of the birds in the current race team are grandchildren of him, and the section winner from Tarbes this year was a son.
The Black Cock
Then we have The Black cock one of a batch of young birds bought from Menne and Daughters in Germany from their very best and then raced by Alwyn. When Alwyn ordered the batch of young birds he stipulated that he didn’t want them delivered before a certain date in late spring as he wanted them to race. However, the Menne team delivered them earlier as they thought he was only joking about racing them as they were out of their very best and cost an awful lot of money, I think they thought something had been lost in translation when Alwyn had asked for them to race. He went 4 times to Tarbes and was 4 times in the top of the results including winning the section. This is a powerhouse of a cock in the hand and, as with Wing Down he is now being pulled in through the gene pool.
The most recent athlete to earn a COM is a beautiful Red cock who handles like a coil of rope in a silk bag and goes under the name of Red Cloud. He has now chalked up 4th Section, 52nd open, 8th Section, 156th open and 1st Section 96th open. If you wanted an example of how close to the tree Alwyn likes his apples bear in mind that Red Cloud’s dad was himself a bit of a long distance racing machine winning amongst others 75th open Barcelona International at just a touch under 800 miles. Red Cloud will now be put across some seriously classy hens including daughters of Wing Down, Little Gem and the much treasured Primus Inter Pares birds and the rest will be up to him.
Let’s also remember that Alwyn has a real quality racing cock called Red Marauder who had chalked up 2nd Section, 26th open Tarbes and 4th Section, 22nd open and was a dead cert in Alwyns eyes to go back a third time and bag his COM. However, the fates intervened and that year the liberation from Tarbes was at 4.15pm and Red Marauder returned home out of race time and with his tail cut down, to this day Alwyn is amazed that he got home. He was never sent back to try for his COM as his guts and willpower impressed the boss enough to try a few from him.
Having gotten his hands on the very best Barcelona blood available on the continent and tested it, Alwyn has switched his search and is now looking closer to home for the next phase of his plan. Using the same level of research, he has turned his sights to Ireland and to the bloodlines available there. His criteria hasn’t changed and he is only interested in multi winning birds from lofts with a lengthy record in racing into the North of Ireland from France. To this end he has brought in birds from The Black family and John Catherwood, both of these lofts were timing in French birds when I had a paper round back in Derry. True to form, Alwyn got his hands on the very best of these respective families and as before has sorted them hard using Mr Basket and the last ones standing will be woven in to the blood lines and given every opportunity to see if the bloodlines will add to the results. It is not hard to see why Alwyn sought out these 2 lofts and again he had clearly done his homework properly and the 2 lofts he approached have won the hard fought INFC Gold Medal that is awarded to a pigeon that is 4 times in the result from The Kings Cup race, The Blue Riband race in Irish pigeon racing. If you have been paying attention then you will be starting to substitute Gold Medal for the NFC Certificate of Merit or the Primus Inter Pares and we all know how Alwyn rates birds with these accolades. Being a clever bugger, he had only gone and found the Irish equivalent to what he had sought out on the Continent and what he has been breeding and racing himself. To make it even better The Black family had been National Champions 2 years on the trot and like Alwyn himself have crafted a family that churns out big hitters on a regular basis such as Drumiller Hill Lad and more recently Big Darren. The Black loft has won 4 Gold medals - quite an achievement when you think that there have been only 12 or so awarded over its history, and like the COM some years there are none awarded. John Catherwood needs no introduction and in Rainbow Warrior his Gold Medal winner he has his own Wing Down a racing machine who has become a top breeder as well. There are other similarities as well, Wing Down is the grandson of 1st national San Sebastian, a 4 times in the prizes from Barcelona hen, a cock that has 3 Barcelona prizes at 792 miles and a daughter of 1st National Perpignan when he was paired to a Primus Inter Pares hen. That is only 2 generations remember that there is another 6 generations backing that up, and all tried and tested at the marathon that is Barcelona. The mighty Rainbow Warrior himself is a grandson of John’s Millar Gold Cup winner from France and a grandson from his Old Bird French Derby winner again horses for courses and tools for the job.
It is when you start talking about the breeding side of things that Alwyn becomes alive and animated, and it is when you actually realise the thought that has gone in to it, and just how far along the line he is, as the above shows.
He is thinking about pigeons 24/7. Planning his next matings, and pulling back in the proven birds across another generation, the breeding side of things gives him a real buzz. The unknown of putting two pigeons together to breed the next champion is its own reward and something I think all fanciers take satisfaction from. He is planning matings in his head and on paper years and generations ahead, which is no small task given the birds he has at his disposal. Now, crazy as this might sound, the breeding side is becoming more complicated as Alwyn has added Wing Down and The Black Cock in to the equation. Not only that, he has now turned his attention to top performance pigeons that are performing at distances above him from Tarbes one example of this is the use of Little Gem, the Tarbes winner for his good friends Pete and Barry Winter up in Yorkshire. Alwyn has brought this blood in to the mix and he is very impressed with what this addition is bringing to the party. He has also been sourcing top Barcelona performing pigeons that have flown in to the North of England and these he sees as vital additions if he is to conquer Barcelona. One of the new Barcelona imports ‘7320’- has been on the result from Barcelona 3 times and his dad has also been on the result - not bad at 850 miles. These are the type of birds that Alwyn will be looking to for the Barcelona team over the next few years and has his eye on one or two to go next year. Another new introduction is a blue cock called Schrale Chris this guy is the real deal and oozes quality. Before coming to Ilkeston he earned a reputation at international level for marathon racing, and was 2nd best pigeon in Holland for his performances out of Perpignan -624 miles between 2011 -2013 and the 6th best in Holland for performances from Barcelona over the same period his distance from Barcelona is 720 miles. These performances obviously mean that he was competing from both race points each season, no mean feat. Having only been with Alwyn a short time there has been little opportunity to test his impact yet but from the first few being raced off him this year a yearling daughter was 13th open Saintes at 501 miles when there were only 16 on the day so early signs look promising.
One of the 9 stock cocks in his individual pen.
In closing, you might think that Alwyn has a huge stock loft with 40+ pairs but think again. He has room for just a handful of stock birds but what a handful!! Some of the top hens he has brought in are used as widowhood hens for the cocks he races, and not all of these are bred from either. In fact he is breeding from only 9 cocks for his own use, although they are in single pens so they can go to multiple hens with ease throughout the season.
In essence, Alwyn has put together the finest marathon performance birds he could get, bred and raced hard and was left with a few nuggets to work with. He started the process again with a new draft and will put the very, very best in to what he has. The offspring from these are taken easy for the first couple of years and little is asked of them except that they compete from Saintes (501 miles) as yearlings. All 2 year olds and above are asked to do Tarbes, the traditional approach has been widowhood cocks, but he was 4th Open BICC Pau with a hen who was beaten by 3 birds on the South Coast on the night. Widowhood has served him well Wing Down and The Black Cock certainly thrived on it but this year the cocks went on fresh eggs as Alwyn will always be game to try something different.
The race birds have acres of room with only a handful of cocks in the race sections allowing him to keep a close eyen the birds for changes in character or health issues.
Some of the race cocks with plenty of space.
When you handle the hens he has at his disposal you realise they are crying out to be raced and I think they would have been if it weren’t for Alwyn’s recent health problems. I have a sneaky suspicion that when he starts to get them dropping in from Barcelona - for have no doubt he will it will be nest hens that stand up to the task being asked of them. I will leave you with a quote from Alwyn that will show you what makes him tick:
‘But Tarbes, now that’s a whole different adrenalin rush and level of experience. That’s what keeps me awake at nights. But even so, patience is a virtue. You need it to be successful in this kind of competition.’
Drew Callan
