A Look into the Future

by

John Clements

The future of the pigeon sport appears bleak at the moment. If we look at the Hall report commissioned by the RPRA and examine the recommendations in that report it appears fanciers and organisations made up by fanciers - are not really good at organising.  That is why outside bodies and outside managers are required to manage.

All this is as it is now but in the future things could be entirely different. The running and the management of pigeon racing may be privatised and fanciers would then be customers of those who sell the technology and organise racing. .

How it could possibly work is for a very minute chip to be inserted into the neck of every Pigeon. This chip could monitor blood pressure - heart beat - and the complete physical condition of the pigeon. This chip could also tell if the pigeon was affected by drugs or other performance enhancing substances.

The chip and the software involved with the chip would of course be covered by copyright regulations so in fact it would be owned by the company that manufactured and sold the chip. . What this would mean that as the owner of the physical pigeon  you would  not own the chip. You would in fact be only racing the chipped bird under licence and did not in fact not own it.

As we all know even today - you race the identification ring not the pigeon. This takes this concept of today to another level where you may be in breach of copyright if you gave the pigeon anything that the chip adversely detected; anything that may affect its performance or health.

All this will happen when technology is advanced enough to follow the path of a an individual pigeon as it makes its way home. When this technology arrives the chip and racing will be merged and fanciers will no longer be in charge of the organisation of the sport. There will be so much money involved in betting - in advertising - in all sorts of other ways that the firms or firm that controls the chip technology will also want to organise the whole management and enterprise of the sport.

For the ordinary fancier this will mean he will just turns up at the club - has his pigeon scanned - if he is a top fancier accept appearance money and enter the race. If he is well known he will have written into his contract the obligation to be interviewed on the TV. If he is an ordinary fancier he will be encouraged to take part by the superb facilities of the venue. These superb facilities will include a restaurant - car parking - something for the children and everything for his family to enjoy every time he races his pigeons.

Of course I am looking into the future but almost certainly large companies with a staff to manage everything efficiently will emerge to run this sport of ours.  This will probably happen within in the next fifty years. Certainly not more than that.

J H  Clements - Stockport

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