Fastest Ever?
Best Sprint bird ever?
I sometimes write "a National Ace need not be the best".
The opposite is also true.
If you do not find names of fanciers among the Provincial or National Champions this does not necessarily mean that those were no good that year.
There are many reasons for this and in my opinion the most important is that the strength of the competition differs so much from one area to the other.
Another reason is that fanciers themselves have to send in their results, which they not always do.
BLUE CHAMPAGNE
A nice example of this is B-04-4367234 (named 'Blue champagne') from Mr. Antoine de Graeve, which was a sensational bird at short distance in 2007.
It won:
738 pigeons ' 6th
1,085 pigeons ' 2nd
877 pigeons ' 1st
1,277 pigeons 2nd
1,108 pigeons 1st
477 pigeons 1st
301 pigeons 1st
313 pigeons 1st
For the National Championship in Belgium these 8 results meant a coefficient of 2.86 points which was far better than that of the runners-up.
With these results the bird did not only become National Ace Sprint KBDB in 2007 but as far as I know it was even the lowest coefficient in the history of pigeon racing.
And do you know what?
If it was not for the Pipa boys no one had ever heard about this bird.
You should know that de Graeve lives nearby, they bought the bird, and when they heard from the owner that he never sent in the results of his birds for Provincial or National championships Nik and Thomas could persuade him to send in the performances of his miracle bird this time.
De Graeve did as he was asked for with the result that it was crowned as National Ace 2007.
The one and only !
GOOD LUCK?
The fantastic weather that we had in the spring of 2007 contributed a lot to the extremely low coefficient of 'Blue Champaign'.
In April it was bright and warm with headwinds every racing day and it is this weather that enables super birds to excel.
This white eyed cock was clocked manually which is a disadvantage in most cases (costly time gets lost) but not this time.
You must know it arrived 3 times together with its brother and once with a half brother.
But the fancier was so smart as to clock 'Blue Champaign' before the others.
Would the birds have been registered electronically he would not have been able to manipulate.
The father of 'Blue Champaign' was a 1998 cock that won no less than 12 firsts. Its bloodline is De Baere crossed with that of Legiest.
The mother from 2003 is of the bloodline De Baere and Mattheeuws.
SOME POINTS OF INTEREST
- The fanciers who live nearby are stunned whenever they see his widowhood cocks train like hell.
But when the birds see de Graeve they go down like rockets to enter the loft, the same like on racing day. The birds trap so fast that the lookers on often cannot see what colour they are.
- He shows the cocks their hens every time before they are basketed.
- Both old birds and youngsters get 'light feed' that is easy to digest.
- He races 15 widowhood cocks maximum. By keeping few birds only he has no other choice than to select strongly, furthermore there will be few birds in the loft which, according to him, is one of the key to his successes.
When there are few birds in the loft they have lots of oxygen which makes all the difference he says.
The mistake that many fanciers make is that after a successful year they keep too many birds. Too many birds in the loft means less oxygen which kills the condition.
- Naturally fellow sportsmen gossip when some body races as well as he does, the main subject is medicating.
If something would be wrong with the birds he would medicate of course but the last 2 racing seasons he has not medicated at all, not even against canker.
His problem is that nobody believes him but that is more a problem of the disbelievers he smiles.