Race 9 Report
The last race of the Sprint Series was a real toughie - ironically the first race of the longer distances turned out to be a fast affair!
The birds were liberated on a crisp, windless Free State morning at Kroonstad which is located at a distance of 330km from the AFRIKAPRO loft.
Again, the pack showed no hesitation in taking off with great haste straight in the perfect direction. Ruan and Hendrik were fortunate to pick up the pack along the N1 and followed it for some 10km. It was clear that today the birds were on the job as they were averaging around 85km/h.
Estimates of a winning flying time somewhere around the 4 hour mark proved to be slightly off the mark with the first pack arriving after only 3 hours 45 minutes. Soon after they landed it literally started raining pigeons with more than 400 clocking within 4 minutes of the winner.
Congratulations to Mark King who’s “Laaitie” walked across the winning line first, closely followed by his other team member, “Double Delight” in 5th - this super performance resulted in Fancier of the Race honours also going to him.
Our Black Jacket leaders after Race 8, Du Preez and Deetlefs, also had a superb race with 4 of their team clocking in the first 100 birds home.
This means that they retain their 1st place and in addition their “Bullit” has now overtaken “Five Star” from Alwyn Bester to lead the Blue Jacket standings. Congratulations Oom Banie and Oom John with an outstanding performance!
Congratulations also to the Hooymans BE team with their first two pigeons both placing in the top 21. Other great results were achieved by KDK Racing from the USA as well as the team from H & EJ Eijerkamp - well done to these participants!
The race distance will now stretch to 380km for Race 10 planned for next week. We are confident that the +/- 200 birds in the recovery section would have dully recovered and will once again be able to make their owners proud.
The recovery pigeons will be trained from the 150 km point tomorrow morning, and will be ready to race again next week.
Good luck to every participant for the remainder of the series - we look forward to some stern tests in the continuously rising temperatures of the Bushveld!
We are very satisfied with our 98% return on the first day.
To view the flying routes of the tracker pigeons on Race 9, please see the following:
