Tarazet

Pigeon Racing In Decline

Speaking of birds, from Boston.com:

For the 12 homing pigeon clubs in the Boston area, racing season began Saturday at 7 a.m., when 865 birds were released from a parking lot in Albany,N.Y. The fliers—or fanciers, as the pigeon racers call themselves—pay a trucker to bring the pigeons to a starting point in a specially designed trailer. Once there, the driver—or liberator, in pigeon-racing parlance—sets the birds free.

The race distances range from several miles to more than 1,000. Saturday’s race averaged 150 miles, depending on where the birds’ owners live. Pigeons typically cover the distance in about 2½ hours, depending on the wind and, as was the case with Farhadi’s bird, whether they slip off course along the way.

Farhadi, who entered 10 birds and is viewed by many pigeon fliers in Massachusetts as one of the top 10 in the state, was one of 77 competitors in the race. That number has dropped dramatically over the past couple of decades, pigeon racers say. Twenty years ago, fliers said, up to 260 competitors raced 3,000 birds at a time.

‘‘That means the sport has decreased by almost 50 percent in the last 20 years,’’ said Matt Moceri, race secretary of the Greater Boston Concourse, which organizes races for 12 teams in Greater Boston.

Actually, I'm surprised that the sport has this many adherents. Not because there's anything wrong with it, just that I didn't even know it existed. The article points out that these are not your average run-of-the-mill pigeons found in parks, but special, pure-bred and trained birds that sell for as much as 1/4 million dollars.

I learn something new everyday...

Posted by Jeff Soyer at April 20, 2004 09:12 AM