THE McGEE/TYERMAN BARCELONA CHALLENGE

by Keith Mott

Some time ago I had a phone call from John McGee, telling me he and his wife, Lou, planned to move to France and set up a loft, with the view to racing other fanciers birds in the International races, through to Barcelona. It was going to be a joint venture with our good friend, John Tyerman, and would be run on the similar lines of the ‘one loft’ race, but the birds will be worked up to the Barcelona International over a three season period. The partners were calling the new venture ‘McGee – Tyerman International Lofts’. John said at the time, ‘With the continuing uncertainty of long distance channel racing in to England and the likelihood of again being unable to compete in the B.I.C.C. International races, here is a unique opportunity for British fanciers to test their pigeons against the finest in Europe. For the first time racing on equal terms to a loft situation in Northern France, Pas-De-Calais, near the town of St. Pol, a distance of some 630 miles from Barcelona’.

The plan was to accept a daft of 2007 young birds that would be trained and raced to 125 miles, then as yearlings will be raced from St. Vincent, Bordeaux, Narbonne and Bergerac. As two year olds all remaining pigeons will be entered in the world’s most prestigious race, the Barcelona International, competing against some 26,000 pigeons. A month later those remaining will go on and compete in the Perpignan International. The McGee & Tyerman loft will accept young birds annually over an initial three year pilot scheme and the emphasis will be on International racing. ‘Ace’ pigeon awards and good prizes are anticipated for pigeons that compete in all the races. Bearing in mind that the Barcelona pigeons will be in the French loft for three racing seasons, with feeding, training and racing, the costs of entering a bird in the scheme was likely to be £165 per bird, with any lost young birds may be replaced prior to racing. When the birds are yearlings it is hoped to breed a round of young birds that will be offered for sale, with proceeds allocated to a loft prize fund. After the Barcelona and Perpignan races entrants may request to keep their pigeons in the team, or allow them to be sold at auction on a 70% to the owner and 30% to the loft basis.

John Tyerman had agreed to assist John and Lou in this exciting new venture and he has been an out standing fancier for many years, winning premier positions in National Classic and B.I.C.C. International races. He is a founder member and past President of the L&SECC, and is well versed in the administration on International racing having been involved with the N.F.C. Dax negotiations, when the U.K. won the event in 2004 / 2005. John Tyerman tells me, ‘This is a ‘Golden’ opportunity for the British fanciers to compete against the very best in Europe, on an even playing field, in the form of a loft on their side of the English Channel. Can we excel and achieve a team performance that will show we have some of the best birds in Europe?’

Barcelona Challenge updates (March 2008)

I recently received an email from my ol’ mucker, John Tyerman, updating me on the progress of his venture with John McGee and inviting me to visit the loft in France this spring. I have reproduced the email in this week week’s ‘ON THE ROAD’ for your information.

'Dear Keith,  

I hope you and the family are all well, and looking forward to the Easter break with the grandchildren. We now have three grandchildren, all boys, Callum 11, Kai 2, and Jonnies baby who is now 8 weeks old. My son Jonathan is now 25 and a big lad, not he scrawny 13 year old that came convoying with us in France, he still loves his fishing and off course remembers you well.

Now to the pigeons as I did promise you info on our Barcelona challenge race which is now up and running. We mentioned a loft visit and you would be made very welcome.  I'm going out in April for 2 days when Douglas Owen brings down some Scottish pigeons. There will be some from Karl Gunther of Dumfries who is a double Scottish National winner, and his friend Thorsten Daum the German National champion is also send birds to us.  He was 3rd open in this year’s Sun City Million Dollar race, so we are attracting the right people. We have also received a serious enquiry from Byron Weaver in Florida asking how many we could take. Needless to say we said we had space for 100 if they can muster them, but the DEFRA quarantine regulations are fairly tough so we will wait and see.  This year many of the BICC big names are entering, John Wills, Albie and Jan Deacon, Mick Bunney, Kevin Blake, Allan Holdaway, Brian Wall, Bill Woodall, Ron Dove and many more.   Last year we started late but still managed just over 100 birds, but some of them did not go out till August, but that does not matter as they will be nurtured along till they reach two and then time for Barcelona.

The story starts when John McGee and I visited the French Olympiad some years ago and we got talking about how much easier it must be to race internationals in France without the channel to contend with.. When they  John and Lou decided to move to France we spent a lot of time and several visits to check out the respective areas and view many properties, on the flight path as we saw it, for birds flying on into Belgium and then Holland.   Eventually we found the smallholding at Hernicourt, a few miles from St Pol Sur Ternoise, and a lovely valley location situated in a totally rural area.   If I told you that John McGee is now known locally as the man who can pull out baby calves with great ease or with the help of a rope. Don't laugh he was summoned several times by Gill the farmer when I was there and he seems to have the knack of top calf delivery man in the area.  In return for his skills they receive free eggs, vegetables and poultry, back to the old days eh.

Anyway back to the pigeons and after arriving on 26th February 2007, John set about building our first Barcelona loft, being ably assisted by two Welsh friends. This 50 foot loft is some 12 feet wide and has several sections, with a central corridor and aviaries on the front where the birds spend their day, looking out across the Ternoise valley. Our first customer was top Scots fancier Dale Newcombe, and his two entries are still with us having completed fairly rigorous training along with the others out to about 40 miles, as we felt this was far enough for them, bearing in mind our late start.  We had entries from most parts of the UK and even southern Ireland, so it will be interesting to see how they perform as yearlings in the Nord Pas de Calais Federation, which often has between 15,000 to 20,000 pigeons. We hope to race these yearlings out to about 350 miles, probably to Limoges and Cahors. The emphasis being on a good education in preparation for the prestigious Barcelona International, where 26,000 birds compete, racing to numerous European countries. We hope to show that our UK and Irish pigeons are as good as the current top Barcelona flyers and I am sure in time we will see some exciting results. As you know the eyes of the world are on the Barcelona international and many consistent pigeons receive bids from all over the world. Robert Ben of Calais sold his for about 100k last year. Obviously all the birds will be in our name, but we will publish our Barcelona result in the UK and everyone will be kept aware of their pigeons progress by letter, email and by our loft computer which will be linked to our Bricon timing system. Bricon are sponsoring the system, and Geraldy have given us the loan of a nice trailer for training the birds. We were also lucky to obtain feed sponsorship from Beyers of Belgium and Henk de Weerdt has agreed to be our loft vet. Brian Wall of Gem Supplements is also supplying various products so we have been very lucky with our sponsors.

The yearlings have now been paired up and as you will appreciate there are some real class pigeons here from top fanciers so some of the young birds bred will be quite unique, and we hope to offer these for sale to the fancy, with the proceeds, less expenses all going into a Barcelona prize fund.  The emphasis is not on large cash prizes but the prestige of seeing you pigeons in the Barcelona result, and hopefully they will go on to score more than once in the Internationals. Wim Muller the Dutch Barcelona champion races them to 7 years of age from Barcelona, and his record is superb. The 2008 young birds will be raced in our local club, probably out to 150 miles, as we don't want to lose them. A gentle steady education during their two years preparation. As you know both John and Lou are totally committed to the success of this new venture and being a past NFC Pau National winner he knows what he is doing. I intend to spend more time in France this year when the yearlings are being prepared for racing and even more time in preparation for Barcelona in 2009, which will be our first attempt.

You will have seen from our BHW adverts that the cost of entry is £165 per bird which covers all race fees, training etc over the 2 year period prior to Barcelona.  However fanciers can send two pigeons for the £165 and if both remain after young birds racing the second one can be activated for a further £165 to race on as a yearling and then 2 year old to Barcelona.   If it helps we can accept four post dated cheques from any genuine fanciers who would like to try their pigeons against the best in Europe. Last year several fanciers delivered their pigeons to our lofts in France and as we are only one hour inland from Calais this is a very pleasant day trip, or you can stay overnight at a very nice little Gite complex where a double room with breakfast costs about £35 for two persons.  John and Lou would be pleased to see you and can be contacted on 0033 321049851 or email  john.mcgee320@orange.fr.   We also have our own website at www.thebarcelonachallenge.com, or www.pigeonportal.comor elimar.pigeons@btinternet.com, clicking onto Barcelona challenge.

I have asked Lou McGee to email some loft photos to you which you can use with your write ups in due course.  I just don't know how you manage to find the time, with all your writing in the fancy press, poor Betty must feel neglected?  Remember you can visit as we discussed but you will have to let me know and I would obviously like to come over to France with you and I think Tony Dann and Pete Taylor said they fancied a look at our set up. The Dover route would mean you can do it in a day but Linda and I like Newhaven to Dieppe which is four hours, the 7am boat is in at 11am and its about a 70 minute drive to John's house through Abbeville and the valley of the Somme, arriving in time for lunch.  You can let me know when we speak.

As you know I have been a BICC member for 25 years and there is no doubt that the channel just stops us from winning the real big ones. You will remember when you and I stood firm amidst a lot of criticism, and took the NFC pigeons to the DaxInternational marking. Little did we know that the UK would then go on to win it twice? Personally I would love to see the BBC go to Barcelona with the BICC International pigeons, as I do believe that a joint effort of say 800 to 1000 pigeons would see a spectacular second day result here in the UK, but the other option is to send to our loft in France, where we are on a level pegging with no channel to cross at the end of a very long and difficult fly. Unfortunately John's stock loft went over in the recent gales and he lost many of his top Janssen pigeons and all the youngsters that had hatched, so he was very down about that. Brian Sheppard the Dax International winner has kindly offered to replace one of the missing stock pigeons, and he incidentally is also sending in our Barcelona challenge.

Best wishes - John Tyerman.'

Lou’s News from France.

Well since we got back from the BHW Blackpool Show its been busy, busy, busy!! Getting the birds out for baths and exercise now that the shoot season has finally ended here in France. We have paired up our stock birds and had our first youngsters hatch today the 5th March. 

On Friday 7th February John and our son Connor laid the floor for our second Barcelona loft due for erection the 15th February, but on Thursday the 14th February we got a call from our friends from Wales who to help with the erection, saying they had car trouble and could not make it. On the Friday evening a French friend of ours, Malthieu, popped in (also a pigeon nut !!) and asked where the new loft was so we explained what had happened. Malthieu said “No Problem”, one of his favourite sayings as nothing is ever a problem and turned up on Saturday morning with two of his brothers, their children, and brother-in-law and in the end the job was done. As I`ve said before the French will really help you out when you need it. After the heavy work was finished John was able to manage on his own and he’s been out there every day since, with the help of our son when he is not at school, doing the felting the tiling and then of course once it was weathered all the internal work began getting it ready for our 2008 entrants.

On Saturday 1st March John took the 2 hour drive down to Dieppe to meet a good friend of ours, Kevin Rennison, the son of our very dear friends Paul and Janet Rennison. Janet hasn’t been too well lately so from all the McGee’s, ‘a speedy recovery Janet’. Back to Dieppe, John was to meet Kevin to collect our first intake of 2008 youngsters and eventually caught up with Kevin at about 10.30am. The Young birds belong to Chris Williams from Trowbridge and they have settled into their new home very nicely. On the 12th March we had one of the biggest disasters ever to happen to us our stock loft was destroyed in the 95mph winds. We got up that morning lifted the shutters like we always do and I went to make coffee, and John shouted “Lou the stock lofts gone”, but not that politely as you can imagine. We went running up the garden and the shed was everywhere, the wind had got under the roof and lifted it like a tornado. There was 46 dead youngsters thrown everywhere, just blown out the loft, it was just awful. Luckily some of the stock birds were trapped in their boxes but we have lost over half the birds, which we can’t replace and it broke my heart seeing all our dead youngsters strewn over the garden.

We had a phone call this week from Gary Inkley and he will be bringing his birds out to us in May, also Bill Woodall a good friend of ours from Dover is bringing his birds out in April. Chris Williams took his birds down to John and Linda Tyerman house and spent some 3 hours looking at John’s birds Chris asked me to thank them for making him so welcome. We also have some of the German fancy participating in our race, including Thorsten Daum one of the top German fanciers and his good friend Karl Dunther from Dumfries Scotland who himself is a double Scottish National winner with the Thorsten Daum pigeons have entered .Some more good news, we have been in contact with Byron Weaver from Florida and are in the processes of sorting out the shipping details as there will be several birds coming from the states this year, so it really is turning out to be an International race. On Tuesday 18th March we drove down to Adinkerke to meet Janet Hull and her husband Dave and they bought their birds over to us, also six belonging to Les Parkinson. John Tyerman has been chatting with Sid Collins who is the chairman of the INFC and he sees this as a fantastic opportunity for all the Irish long distance enthusiasts to compete from Barcelona and he is very keen to get a team of Irish pigeons from the best National fanciers. We also have the two English Dax International winners sending to us, in the form of Brian Sheppard of Trowbridge and Mark Gilbert of Windsor. We have had a few e-mails from different fanciers enquiring about the race even from Canada and Norway. Where else could you get to compete in one of the most prestigious races on a level playing field, with NO channel!! Sunday, 23rd March we have to register the electronic rings at our club and then all birds will be rung with them, so after all training flights and races you can log onto the web

Well it sounds excellent to me! I am going to try and visit the Barcelona Challenge loft in France this spring and on my return I will do a full loft report. Any comments on this great new venture, please phone me on: 01372 463480. See yer!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.