VIC ROBINSON
by Liam O Comain
At the beginning of the last century an English teenager caught the bug of the sport of pigeon racing. This was nothing new for many youths shared the same experience throughout the world whereever the sport laid down its roots. But that 16 year old shared that which has been limited to the few and that commodity (if you like) comes under the name of 'genius'. Yes, that era
was witnessing the blossoming of a master, indeed a great master of the sport of distance pigeon racing.
The bug was caught by our then young subject in approximately 1911 or 1912 and by the 1930s the name of Vic Robinson was written high in the realm of pigeon racing. Indeed in the course of one decade of time our subject was not once out of the prizes in long and tough distance competition. In fact his successes were phenomenal for he won the 1934 National from San
Sebastian and, in his time, the National Homing Union Gold Medal and every trophy of that body including the two-bird and three-bird competitions.
It would appear that our subject was a determined individual who knew what he wanted and unceasingly pursued it. Sprint or middle distance racing apparently was not for him so he saved his money and purchased stock from a next door neighbour - a Mr Blake - in order to pursue his dream of long distance and marathon success. Blake was a man with no financial problems for he stocked his lofts with the best of bloodlines available in Britain at that time. Thus knowing what he wanted and being a thinking pigeoner, Robinson carefully began to build his own family. One of his best purchases was the famous stock bird '1502' which he bought in 1919. This great producer was of Osman's 'Forlorn Hope' and the 'Weinberg Hen' bloodlines.
Thus with a sound base and the occasional cross from proven champions Vic Robinson stepped forward to conquer the world of his chosen sport and what a conqueror. For the archives confirm that Robinson's pigeons won more National prizes than any other pigeoner in the land of the rose, namely England, in the decades between 1929 and 1954. In fact to illustrate the
greatness of Robinson's family, in one of if not the toughest National races from Pau in 1952 16 pigeons were entered and 13 were clocked in race time with the other three arriving soon after. His 13 candidates timed occupied positions between 25th and 127th. And of course Vic Robinson (of Baddesley, Hants) almost won another NFC National from Pau in 1954 when he finished 2nd.
Two of Robinson's best racers were the renowned sisters 'Jeannie' and 'Renown' who flew from San Sebastian eleven times between them, winning many prizes. A couple of many! And if a lesson is to be learnt from this insight into one of the best distance flyers since the sport's origins, that is the importance of starting with the right stock. For the two mentioned sisters in this
paragraph plus the bulk of our subject's other winners contained the genes of 'Forlorn Hope' and the 'Weinberg Hen', the main plank of Vic Robinson's outstanding family of thoroughbred athletes. Surely '1502' was one of the best producers in the history of the sport and remember our subject saved up to buy what in time proved to be pigeon gold.
16/9/07
