Race 10 Report
With one month to go to the Final, and after a fairly easy Race 9, many of our participants were hoping for a tough race today. It would seem that their wishes came true…
It was the first truck sleepover at liberation point and the birds were awake bright and early to have a drink before the 383km journey home.
From the outset, conditions were much tougher than the previous week and the pigeons were liberated into a moderate headwind. The temperature was 12 degrees Celsius under cloudless skies.
The expected winning velocity was somewhere around 1200m/min which proved to be spot-on!
After a flight of 5 hours 19 minutes the first pack of 7 pigeons arrived with Supreme Lofts’ “Madonna” walking in first.
Congratulations to Martin from Bothaville with this fantastic win!
Fancier of the race honours went to Douw Steyn Racing Pigeons who was the only fancier with two pigeons in the first pack. Very well done to Douw, Carolyn, Adam and the rest of the team in Steyn City. Douw’s team also performed exceptionally well last season so it was no surprise to see their name on top today.
Last year, “Karayel”, the eventual winner of the Blue Jacket Competition started her conquering quest on the 380km mark. It would appear that this year, “Bullit” from Du Preez & Deetlefs may be doing the same when she arrived in 10th place. This means that she now enjoys more than a 7 minute lead over her closest rival who was entered by Team Hooymans BE.
When Banie & John’s second pigeon “Cyclone” arrived some 5 minutes later it meant that they would retain 1st position on the Black Jacket Rankings with an increased lead of more than 12 minutes over Team Hooymans BE. A hearty congratulations to the team of Du Preez & Deetlefs on sitting in first place in both the major rankings with only 4 races to go!
Ruan and his team are very satisfied with the returns on what turned out to be a really difficult day - by sunset 86% of the pigeons had returned. The early arrivals have already regained their condition and are looking great!
We will be watching next week’s weather very carefully as it looks like extreme temperatures of over 33 Celsius with strong winds will prevail for most of the week.
As a result we will keep you posted about the date and distance of Race 11. We are very proud about the fact that our losses have been comparatively low, and we will do our very best to ensure that your birds always get the best in all aspects of their training and racing.
Good luck for those of you that are in the last couple of weeks of your own racing season and as always we wish each and every one of our participants the best of luck!
To view the flying routes of the tracker pigeons on Race 10, please see the following:
