What a great day! I attended the final of the The UK Premier One Loft Race today. Met some great people down there, new and old. First of all a big thank you to Jeremy Davies, Nikki and Heather for their hospitality, great food and drink and atmosphere. Also, an even bigger thank you to Jeremy for the hard work he puts into this race. For me, he runs the best OLR in the UK, he genuinely cares about the birds and does the very best he can.
Today was a very hard day with only 20/256 birds back on the first day, so I can see why he is very disappointed, but like I said to him before I left. He knows in his heart he has done everything he possibly can for the birds and their owners, and that’s all that matters. Hopefully, there will be more birds working their way in over the next few days. If you look at the time between the birds coming in, you will see what a hard race it was for them. We had a great result for Pioneer Syndicates today. John Gladwin & John Cowlin of Zwols Pigeons got 6th place, and I with Pioneer Pigeons got 11th place. 2 birds back in 20 on a hard day like today is some going. I was so pleased to see John Gladwins pigeon come in 6th!
After the shitty year John and his family have had, it was nice to see something good, happy, with this 6th place and the great St Malo national results he and John Cowlin had at the weekend. I’ve said to many people over the last two years, John Gladwin is one of the nicest, most generous people I have ever met in the pigeon sport, and I feel very grateful to call him a friend and work with him on this great sport of ours 🙂
I’m especially happy with the pigeon I bred as she is a grand dtr of Snow Prince and Maurice O’donnell Star Boy! The vision and goal I have set for Pioneer Pigeons is to produce the best OLR pigeons I can by crossing the best pigeons I can get. For me, there are no harder OLR pigeons than the Miss Maurice / Star boy pigeons made world-renowned by the OLR master Maurice O’donnell, who I feel honoured to call one of my best friends in the sport. I have been focused on the Mc Faddden and Snow Prince pigeons for two years now as I believe they are equally as hard as nails and just the type of pigeons needed for the kind of race the final was today. I guess it validates a little my vision has something in it, and inspires me to keep going and improving. I’m sure more pigeons will work in for Jeremy over the coming days.
A big congratulations to G.W.C.F Partnership, the winners of the final today, also a special mention to Kerrin Harris, who I met in person for the first time today, we both seem to have a simular vision and he did great today with 13th, his pigeon has the heart of a lion as she had a wound on her chest and still got back in 13th position! It was great chatting to him about our vision fo producing OLR pigeons and moving the sport to more mainstream with what we are each doing with our syndicate platforms. 🙂
Onwards and upwards, and I’m not looking forward to the final of the Algarve Pigeons Golden Race Spain in a few weeks 🙂
