Keith Mott writes about winning fanciers past & present

JON OLAV THRANA of Norway

I first met Jan Olav Thrana in October 2000, when he came over from Norway for two of Eric Cannon’s dispersal sales and he stayed for a week at my home. He bought me over a Danish pigeon paper and it contained a two page article on my ‘rabbit hutch’ loft system and I was amazed where they got the photographs and information from! Jan came over to England a second time with his brother, Ova, and his wife, Sonia, for the Silverstone F1 Grand Prix and they spent a day with us at Claygate to view the loft and pigeons.

Jan lives in Kristiansand on the south tip of Norway and they race pigeons from the north east, but because of the massive hawk problem in that area they have gone more northerly and race from the mountains. Jan tells me two of their recent races were from the skiing centre at Hoven, 3,000ft. up in the mountains and they were very successful, with the birds recording very good velocities over the 100 miles races. There are two clubs in Jan’s area of Norway, one at Kristiansand and the other at Arendal in the north and both have no club radius, with some members living 100 miles away. Jan’s club at Kristiansand has a membership of 15 fanciers and they fly a ten race programme each season. There are about 550 pigeon fanciers in Norway and the nearest club to Kristiansand, apart from Arendal, is 100 miles to the west at Bergen and this area hosts the largest number of fanciers in Norway.

Jan says the winters in his area of Norway are to severe and they pair their birds up at the beginning of March, and start racing at Rysstad and the longest race is from Hudijsval in Sweden, about a 420 miles fly to Jan’s loft in southern Norway. The young birds get four races, with the longest being from Dokka (200 miles). Jan races on the natural system, because he works on the oil rigs on the North Sea, and the system makes it easy for his friend to look after the pigeons while he is away working. Jan likes long distance racing and keeps several families to do this job, mainly pigeons obtained from the late Eric Cannon of Wormley. Jan has direct children of all Eric’s champions and at the dispersal sales he purchased several premier pigeons including, ‘The 19 Stock Cock’, ‘Culmer Whiteflight’ and Champion ‘Culmer Marion’, winner of 1st. open N.F.C. Sartilly for the Cannon loft in 1990. He says a direct daughter of Eric’s champion stock cock, ‘Culmer Producer’, has bred well for him, including a hen that was the only bird on the day in the club from Ostersund (430 miles). Jan recently spent a lot of money at the late Jim Biss dispersal sales and several premier pigeons were imported to his loft in Norway. He has won many premier prizes in long distance events through the years and has had some good success with his Danish family, which he obtained in the mid 1980’s. Jan houses his 50 pairs of old bird racers in a four section, 25ft. loft and breeds 150 youngsters every season. The Norwegian fanciers have to breed a lot of babies and have big racing teams, as the losses to Hawks are so heavy. The old birds start training two weeks before the racing starts and then they are given one toss during the racing season. He keeps 20 pairs of stock birds and the young birds are only normally trained up to 80 miles and not raced. Jan likes hens sitting 12 day old eggs for the long distance events and when picking out stock birds prefers pigeons to be small to medium in the hand. In Norway most fanciers use the Electronic Clocking System and Jan says he was one of the first fancier to obtain the system in his country.

Well that’s your ‘ON THE ROAD’ for this week! I hope my readers have enjoyed this little insight into pigeon racing in Norway. I can be contacted on telephone: 01372 463480. See yer!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.

13/12/06