PREDICTIONS FOR TARBES & BARCELONA 2015

by Jim Emerton

Both races will be exciting and create an enormous buzz in the psyche of the fancy. TARBES NFC will have a spattering of the old stalwart names like Gilbert/Shepherd/Cooper/Bush and perhaps Denney in the result, since these are specialists who can execute the race with individuals from the families they have created. However, time evolves change and new names will be spotlighted as they master this onerous race point, like Winters and Adshead - there is ample room at the top if you muscle into it. It will be a stiff race, with plenty timed in over race time up to 800 miles.

The peerless and epic BICC BARCELONA INTERNATIONAL will be a race for marathon specialists and expect no more than around 10 per cent clockings over the duration of the race, and both my trophies will be won over 750 miles, with an increased BICC entry. We will be short on entries as the BBC opted for Palamos - a difficult little spectacle.

All these races are a sporting test of man and bird, and Nic and I hope to land a good one at Barcelona. As usual UK birds will struggle to navigate the Barcelona huge/diverse entry, and facing the vagaries of the English Channel, velocities relative to Europe will fall - how it is and will be in the future. This factor will not deter our lads who one day will crack the top 50 open - done in modern times with over 20 thousand pigeons in the race. Clocking into Scotland and Ireland is a crystal gaze into the future.

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Elimar - January 2015