Bushell's Best Bits - Everything You Needed To Know About The World's Craziest Sports. Mike Bushell

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СКАЧАТЬ as the Animal Victoria Cross. Horses, dogs and a naval cat were among those to have the medal hanging around their necks, some posthumously, but of all the 53 Dickin medals handed out for animal bravery, 32 of them went to pigeons.

      One bird, GI Joe, was awarded the honour for saving over 1,000 Allied soldiers in one move. On 18 October 1943, an American infantry division called for a heavy aerial attack on a town called Colvi Vecchia in Italy. It was occupied by the Germans, or so it was thought. To the Allies’ surprise, the Germans retreated from the town and a British brigade was able to secure the area that day. They would have become the victims of a friendly fire massacre, because radio signals were failing to get through to their base telling the Americans to call off the bombing. So GI Joe was released, with the lives of a whole division resting on his wings. He flew 20 miles in 20 minutes and arrived just as the American planes were on the runway. The mission was aborted.

      Another pigeon, Winkie DM, helped rescuers find his stricken crew after their plane had crashed into the sea in 1942. And then there was White Vision. He flew 60 miles over stormy seas from the Hebrides off the north of Scotland, through thick mist and against a vicious headwind. Visibility was no more than a hundred yards for most of the journey and so rescuing her stricken RAF crew would have been impossible without precise information about where they were. Thanks to White Vision struggling against the odds, this crew was also saved. Even more recently, in the Gulf War pigeons were again valuable, because their messages weren’t affected by electronic jamming.

      Racing pigeons were already been involved in sport long before the world wars. Long distance racing grew with the spread of the railway system and was officially organised in 1897 with the formation of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association. The spread of the railways was important, because one of the ways pigeons find their way home is by recognising landmarks or lines on the ground, be it a railway line or road. That’s not their only talent, because on their own, map reading skill wouldn’t be enough to get them back home during 1,000-mile races.

      Research is still being done to pinpoint exactly what it is, but it’s thought they have an inbuilt ability to navigate using the position of the sun in the sky and the earth’s magnetic fields. Some scientific evidence which is being studied by university teams suggests they have a magnetic receptor in their brains. Other research points to them using smell.

      After the war, pigeon racing became fashionable, thanks in part to footballers. In the days before they earned huge amounts of money, they would own racing pigeons rather than racehorses. They made the sport popular with the masses. Some involved in football today have maintained their love for the birds. The former England football captain Gerry Francis was one of the big names involved, and he still has a loft. At the time of writing, he is assistant to Tony Pulis at Stoke City.

      What attracted the footballers was that the birds were cheap to buy, but were fast and unpredictable to race. What’s more, according to Stewart Wardrop, General Manager of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, you just never know what may happen.

      ‘You can be a beginner or have a pigeon that has a pedigree you have nurtured for many generations, but everyone has an equal opportunity. No one knows if the weather is going to be right, or if the elements are going to be in your favour. You all have the chance to win the big race.’

      Footballers may have moved on to horse racing, but the attraction is still the same. You can still become an owner for ten pounds, and in one race your bird could win you £20,000. You do pay a one-off fee, perhaps in the region of £100, if you want to keep your bird with a manager and trainer at a professional loft. Here it will be trained, and its natural instincts honed. Jeremy Davies is the manager of the One Loft near Malvern, where one of the big annual races is held and where 1,500 pigeons are housed. Jeremy gets birds in when they are around four weeks old. He then provides their health care and gives them the right nutrients and food to help them settle in. They learn to fly around the loft before eventually being taken for their first flight home. To begin with, Jeremy will take them a mile away. Then days later it will be two miles, and then he will release them from five miles and 10 miles, building up gradually to 50 miles. All the time, the birds are programming the map of the ground below into their brains. In races they will often track a road, even to the point of going around the outline of a roundabout in the sky.

      ‘It’s like managing a racehorse,’ says Jeremy. ‘You have to give them the right diet so they stay really fit and healthy. I take them out to increasing distances to train them so they get to know their way home, but it’s all about them really and their natural ability to read the earth’s magnetic fields and the sun. I make sure they have the right food, and make it nice here for them, so that they want to come home, to the hens and the cocks. These are all motivational factors to make them go that little bit faster. It’s the love of home really.’

      Jeremy’s greatest reward is breeding a winning line that runs through several generations.

      ‘I love the creating the true pedigrees, that give birth to offspring who then also go and win races. You get to know them all, and it’s a great feeling when you see them come in from a long race.’

      Not as many birds are making it back, though. 2012 was one of the hardest years on record for the sport, with 20,000 pigeons going missing. They have been hit by a triple whammy. According to Stewart, the sun’s behaviour has changed. Solar activity has increased to a level that hasn’t been seen for a thousand years. Its poles have switched for the first time in 11 years, and the resultant unseasonal weather has confused some birds.

      Then there are birds of prey. Their population has been booming to such an extent that they have been moving into towns and cities where most racing pigeons are kept. Some have nested near to this free food source and even preyed on the pigeons in their own lofts. ‘It’s been an incredibly tough year,’ mourned Stewart. ‘To see 20 years of hard work disappear in a hawk attack is very upsetting, and it is driving people away from the sport.’ The main diet of a peregrine falcon is racing pigeon, while sparrow hawks will join the feast if the supply of songbirds is running out.

      According to the RPRA, when a sparrow hawk attacks a flock of racing pigeons, it’s not just over for the one it choses for lunch, but the other pigeons will panic and scatter and their homing instincts are destroyed. Pigeon fanciers are bird lovers, so they insist they have nothing against the birds of prey, but they want help in protecting their sport. There used to be around 120,000 pigeon fanciers in the UK. Today there is half that number, with 45,000 association members. They are now working on ways to reduce raptor attacks. One is a £32,000 project at Lancaster University to develop ways of deterring the birds of prey. It may be in the future that pigeons carry bells or wear sequins, to make them less appealing.

      The sport is now on a mission to get new people owning racing pigeons. The RPRA has started sponsoring keen youngsters to enter a pigeon in the name of their school. They want newcomers, like seven-year-old Heather Davies, Jeremy’s daughter, to get hooked. ‘I like the white ones, they’re quite pretty,’ she explained as she reached across the loft to prize her favourite from its perch. ‘I love them coming home at the end of the race and once I came fifth. My friends think it’s really cool that I am involved in the racing.’

      I was invited to see the attraction too. I picked a bird called Louise who had recently won a race from France and was in top international form. I also thought it would appeal to my Breakfast colleague Louise Minchin, who would be on the sofa on the Saturday when the piece went out. I helped load the birds into a basket before they were taken to a table to be electronically recorded, ready for the race. Then it was into a car for a short journey into the picturesque Malvern Hills. I was allowed a quick pep talk with Louise through the slightly ajar lid of the basket. ‘Just turn left at the trees, keep out of the wind and head in a straight line and think of what you did to the rest on the way back from France’ were my words of wisdom, as Louise fidgeted and looked away. It СКАЧАТЬ