I started racing pigeons in 1993 in Vryheid, Northern Natal Federation. I got my first pigeons from Vic Furstenburg from Potchefstroom. The Oscar De Vriendt, Janssens and Putteries I got from him were super pigeons. My first race as a novice, I won the race from Paul Roux. In the years to come, I became chairman of the Vryheid Racing Pigeon Club and served as the vice-chairman of the Natal Racing Pigeon Union under the Chairman De Wet Frylinck. In 2004 we moved to Pretoria. In 2005 I was one of the founders of the very strong Crusaders Racing Club, with Charl Stander as our first chairman. The first two years racing was a huge problem for me. Working hours were from 06:00 in the morning till late at night, which forced me to stop racing. I then went to the SCMDPR in 2011 with my brother Jan, and then started to build a new loft straight after that. In 2012 I joined the Sinoville Club, and raced here because it was the closest club to my house. In 2013 I went back to join Crusaders and is still with them today. I was very fortunate to enter at Dinokeng One Loft Race in 2013. In the main race we were placed 7th, 32nd and 45th. The first loft to have 3 birds back, and we only entered 6 pigeons. In the Barzalona race we entered two pigeons and were placed 2nd and 5th from 6 birds on the drop. In 2015 we bred and raced, ZA 08672/14, the yearling points winner in Pretoria Combine and ZA 9981/13 “Concorde”who won the SANPO Silver Medal Middle Distance as well as the SANPO Gold Medal Overall. A great achievement for us. In 2016 we bred the 2nd Best Grand Average pigeon at Dinokeng. In 2017 we entered the 1st, 3rd and 4th best SA Pigeons at the Derby Arona One Loft. We also finished 6th Best Grand Averages from 3037 paid entries. We also bred “DART” the Ace Pigeon at the Victoria Falls World Challenge Race. We relocated our own loft at the end of 2016 and raced only babies in 2017, and finished 8th Yearling points in Pretoria Combine and had the third best yearling pigeon. I bought “Mugabe” at the auction of Johan and Mark King in 2013 for R110 000. Suddenly all black pigeons became Mugabe’s, and everybody jumped the bandwagon. I then decided to start investigating into the DNA of pigeons. A year later I signed a contract with the University of Pretoria to do DNA on pigeons. Ferdie Lubbe, John Du Preez and Louis Botha joined in on the venture. Since then I have DNA tested all my stock birds and breed DNA certified birds. This is the only way to be able to proof to my customers that, what they are buying is true to the pedigree they receive. We introduced the Kittel pigeons to our breeding loft in 2020 with great success. We have won numerous accolades in one loft racing with offspring from these Kittel pigeons cross bred to our local strain pigeons.