FALSE CREDENTIALS

by John Clements

Ideas, concepts and investigation do not sit happily with British Pigeon Racing. Here in the UK, the sport of the pigeon can be described as having a first prize obsession. This obsession drives the U.K. sport while ideas or more rounded truthful assessments do not. Belief in first prizes eventually leads to downgrading of competition. Thus, smaller breakaway clubs have become the pattern. Breakaway clubs, and the subsequent bad blood that comes with them, are encouraged by a system that needs to produce first prizes to believe in itself.

The quality of the underlying competition that produces these first prizes appears to have been purposefully overlooked. We appear to want first prizes at any cost so we adjust the competition in various ways to improve the chances of getting a first prize. First prizes have become a bonding ritual for a tribe of fanciers (the majority) who want to constantly congratulate themselves, pat each other on the back, butter each other up, so that when real non contrived performances emerge, prizes that haven’t been contrived either through breakaways or boundary changes, most are stuck dumb. Either we can’t understand them or, for reasons best known to ourselves, we try to ignore the facts as best we can. We all know about real quality and rarity of performance but we avoid even mentioning it lest quality spreads and contrived first prizes are seen to be what they are.

John Clements (2nd from right) with Bernard de Weerdt, Russel Bradford and the late Barry Hobbs and wives at a House of Commons dinner.

Partial success due to flying extra distance, or partial failure due to wind conditions are not considered. It always takes an outright win to get even the slightest bit of attention and even then such a win is not really taken up as evidence of where the sport should go. I remember well the first International win into the U.K. Almost everyone thought it was a ‘one off’ never to be repeated and some had the temerity to say it was not really an International win at all because it was not part of the ‘Europa’Cup’. The clear attempt was to downgrade the event. Since then of course there have been others – although it is now thought to be possible to win and International performances cannot be ignored, the goalposts have been changed yet again to restore tribal order. The current chant is – “no one will ever win from Barcelona.” There is even a kind of prize on offer designed that no one will ever get the money. This is a false prize – it is part of the age old ritual of tribal pretence attempting to downgrade real performance. This attitude underlies much of how the UK thinks. It underlies so much of what we accept based on avoiding rather than finding out.

It is this propaganda of small success that limits us. It is a less achievement to win outright from 100 miles in a small club than to time the majority of your team from 500 miles in a ‘National’ and yet not to win. How we assess these things determines how we think and what we value.   

We, as a country, have generally lost out because we cannot stage races with a large number of birds as they do on the continent. Why we in the UK have so far not developed a rounded more thoughtful prize system defies belief. It probably needs an investigation into the whole system of how the sport is influenced or controlled within the UK by an official body like the RPRA Council but I cannot think of one RPRA Councillor who could produce a report contrasting the benefits and drawbacks of the UK system as opposed to the one that operates in a country like Belgium. Investigation into our system of prizes is not one that occupies their minds.

The Need to Save Ourselves

Eventually to save ourselves we must try for the recognition of a more rounded system based on statistical information that reflects consistency. This is because consistency of performance is a better judge and finds better pigeons. Unfortunately, at the moment consistency does not sell, and the average fancier sees no connection between a better system and money.

The Belgians and the Dutch

Both the Belgians and the Dutch have found ways to do this – their competitions include statistical calculations designed to find consistency in individual pigeons and consistency of individual lofts. The result of all this is they have much bigger races with more birds and more lofts competing. They also have a clearer idea of the quality of their racing.  They have capitalized on this aspect of being able to stage bigger races with more birds and more lofts so it has become natural to assume that their stock is superior to ours. The unfortunate result is we in the UK have in effect become a client state serving the Belgians and the Dutch. This is compounded by the fact that UK fanciers import 90% of their stock birds from either of those two countries; often, but not always, with desirable long-term results. Needless to say the UK exports very little of its own stock.

In recent years (certainly since World War II) a pigeon stud industry and a growing number of individual part time breeders based on Belgian and Dutch stock has grown up in the UK that by extensive advertising has further helped to reinforce the dominant role of Belgium and The Netherlands. This industry, through constant re-selling of continental stock or birds bred off them, pushes Continental pigeons at the expense of our own home grown stock. The fact that our stock that has to cross the sea to get home should in fact make our birds superior but somehow through publicity or propaganda we have grown to believe theirs are better than ours in every case.

What we in the UK have done in fact, is to take over the job of perpetuating Continental superiority so they no longer have to demonstrate their own credentials – we do it for them because our inferior system based on outright winners thinks their pigeons are best because they win in bigger races. This is not the full story, but the result is,  we as pigeon fanciers here in the UK  will always remain second best, importing far more than we export because we really think we are second best. It seems to makes no difference that no amount of buying of continental stock ever brings us closer to closing the gap between them and us. They will always be superior pigeon countries and we will always be an inferior pigeon country. That is how we have contrived things over the years.