KEITH MOTT
Writes about winning fanciers past and present
Lewis & Angela Milne break the British 600 mile record in 2013!
I quite often have very interesting conversations with Mark and Dick Evans of Whitley Bridge, who are world famous for their wonderful racing performances and breeding of the Gaby Vandenabeele pigeons. The Vandenabeele pigeons must be rated as the best family in the UK at this time, winning everything at every level in recent seasons. In my opinion the Busschaerts were one of the best families of racing pigeon ever, winning big time over a great many years and now the Gaby Vandenabeele pigeons have replaced them. I think the Vandenabeele pigeons will be highly successful for many years to come! I was talking to Dick on the phone a couple of weeks ago and he was telling me about the success Lewis and Angela Milne of Sutton, near Doncaster, have enjoyed with one of their Gaby Vandenabeele pigeons. I have always thought of the Vandenabeele pigeons being brilliant between 100 and 400 miles, but Lewis and Angela won 1st North Section, 3rd Open MNFC Bordeaux ‘Blue Riband’ National in 2013. Their section winner, ‘Champ Seventy Seven’, was their single entry in to the Bordeaux National and was bred by Mark & Dick Evans from ‘Calvin’ and ‘Cosmic Girl’, the 1st Up North Combine winner. ‘Champ Seventy Seven’ and his nest brother were purchased by the Milnes at the Mr & Mrs Crossley clearance sale and were broken pigeons to the loft at Doncaster. Dick Evans tells me it has been confirmed that their Bordeaux National performance is a new 600 mile record, with ‘Champ Seventy Seven’ recording a velocity of 1685ym, flying 602 miles. This is the highest velocity recorded by a pigeon flying over 600 miles and the previous record was set by Dr Tresidder in 1931!*see footnote at the end of this article. A fantastic performance! My good friend, Ian French, who has been the MNFC convoyer for several seasons, liberated the 1352 Bordeaux National birds at 06.10hrs in no wind situation, but they picked some helping wind en route, with 600 mile pigeons being clocked on the day. Dick Evans has told me that the Gaby Vandenabeele pigeons have been clocked at 500 miles and he has been asked many times if they will do 600 miles. This Bordeaux race has answered that question, they win at 600 miles!
‘Champ Seventy Seven’ is a champion in the truest sense of the word, having won many other premier positions before his Bordeaux record breaking performance including: 2011: 10th section, 17th open MNFC Chale (4080 birds), 69th section, 164th open MNFC Carentan (3949 birds): 2012: 221st section, 1544th open MNFC Vire (4756 birds), just three weeks after being broken in to Lewis’ loft: 2013: 98th section, 571st open MNFC Ancenis (5510 birds), 1st section, 3rd open MNFC Bordeaux (1352 birds), New British record holder for fastest velocity flying over 600 miles, 2nd open Great Yorkshire Combine Bordeaux, RPRA South Yorkshire & Derbyshire Region Award for best all round performance, 3rd National ‘ace bird’ Long Distance MNFC North Section. Plus other prizes in the club and Federation. A wonderful pigeon! His nest brother is the blue cock, ‘Super Seventy Six’, and he has also been an outstanding racer foe Lewis, winning: 4th Federation, 33rd section, 125th open National (4,379 birds), 65th section, 150th open National (3,949 birds), 376th section, 2,418th open National (6,861 birds). A fantastic nest pair of Gaby Vandenabeele racers!
The husband and wife team of Lewis and Angela Milne race their pigeons in Doncaster, South Yorkshire and they race as L. & A. Milne to a very compact 20ft loft set up, with a 6ft stock shed, where the old adage is applied “quality not quantity”. The lofts are made from two converted garden sheds which have been adapted over the past four years to fit to their own micro climate. The lofts are facing east on to the open fields and are hit by all the weather blown in on the wind which the partnership feel is no detriment to the birds which fly out in all weathers. There is only a very small team housed in their loft, with a maximum of six being sent to the National races and believe it or not the partnership only started back in the sport in 2010 after buying their first house together. They had a bit of bad luck with young birds in the first year, where it was found they were fielding, which is something not tolerated by the partners. None of the birds were retained, but since then a tighter control of the birds has been exercised. Their first full year was 2011 and their first National race with the M.N.F.C was in 2012 and this was the main reason for re-starting, with Lewis holding on to a dream to win a National since he was a young lad. He started racing while still at school in his late teens and was late nearly every day, falling asleep in the sun watching the birds fly on the allotments in Sheffield. In Lewis’ first race, flying with another young lad, they won 1st Federation, at which point Lewis thought that pigeon racing was easy but he went on to not win another prize for two years. Lewis was encouraged to race pigeons by his grandfather, Geoff Newsome of Chester, a great pigeon flyer in his own right and the man who taught Lewis so many of the tricks of the trade used today. Lewis stopped racing when he was 18 years old when he went chasing hens himself and only came back to the sport in 2010 after a brake of some twelve years.
Lewis and Angela have to work the pigeon racing round their busy lives, with Lewis working as an assistant site manager of a college and Angela is assistant head teacher of a secondary school. Therefore time is at a premium and training of the birds in the summer takes place before work at 3.45am, with a workout around the loft of a night time. Their club racing takes place at the very competitive Yorkshire Progressive HS and Lewis tells me there are no fewer than three 1st section and two 2nd section winners within its ranks in the last two years. Angela said ‘flying against people like Nigel Laycock, Steve Field, Terry Jobes and S. Gill & Sons is very hard as they are all brilliant pigeon racers’. The partnership feels that the high quality of the competition racing weekly helps them to get the most out of their birds and keeps them motivated throughout the season. Lewis & Angela like to keep tabs on the birds when they are paired, taking note of birds in particular nest condition and form. Then using this valuable information to their advantage later in the season to help condition and motivate there birds as required. Lewis and Angela were married in 2013 missing most of the young bird season. After the wedding, when Angela asked Lewis what was his favourite day of the year, he replied, their wedding day of course, but only because he was 3rd open National and hadn’t fulfilled his dream of winning 1st open National!
Some of Lewis’ stock birds are direct children of Gaby Vandenabeele’s champions, bred by Mark and Dick Evans, including: ‘Zoe Marie’, daughter of ‘Golden Gaby’, ‘Fagin’ son of ‘Benetton’ and ‘Nancy’ daughter of ‘Benetton’. One of his premier stock cocks, the blue chequer ‘Oliver Twist’, is direct from the Vandenabeele loft in Belgium and he is the son of ‘Mr. Bergerac’, the winner of several National prizes, including 1st National ‘ace’ pigeon. Lewis and Angela are very keen on long distance racing and like to cross some of their Gaby Vandenabeele pigeons with other winning families to produce top 550 mile racers. One of the top 550 mile breeders is Angela’s white hen, ‘White Star’ and she was bred by the Dutch ‘ace’, Theo de Kruijk. The partners visited Theo’s loft in Holland in 2008 and he gifted Angela this wonderful hen, and she has produced several premier long distance racers including: 7th section, 345th open (5,603 birds), 4th section, 93rd open yearling classic (575 birds), 118th section, 1,544th open (5,425 birds) and 39th section, 137th open. Other long distance stock birds in the Sutton loft are: ‘Lady In Red’, daughter of’ Red Barcelona’ winner of 1st open National and ‘Red Tai’, bred by Armstrong and Wheatley in the North East of England and she is a daughter of ‘Red Emperor’ winner of 1st open National (534 miles).
I asked Lewis what the story was behind his wonderful Bordeaux performance and told me, “the story of our Bordeaux blue riband section winner is remarkable! Champ Seventy Seven is a Gaby Vandenbeele pigeon bred by Mark & Dick Evans of Whitley Bridge and was sold as one of their £50 race birds, being a direct son of Calvin the super racer when paired to Cosmic Girl, the 1st Up North Combine winner. The pigeon was bought as a young bird and raced with its nest mate ‘76’ by some friends of ours, Mr and Mrs Crossley. Due to the serious illness of Mrs Crossley, the partners were forced to pack up part way through old bird season in 2012. The two cocks were purchased and broken into our loft. After three weeks work around the loft and training, both cocks were sent to the MNFC Carentan race sitting eggs, with both being clocked within half an hour of each other, and this indicated to us that both pigeons had something special. The Seventy Seven Cock raced on widowhood and had been clocked before his journey to Bordeaux. It had been noticed four weeks before Bordeaux that he had not caste a single flight, so I decided to re-pair the whole team and get them down on eggs and splitting them once the cocks through their first flight. Once this happened the birds were back on widowhood and then the form started to come, with some training with our good friend Tic ‘The Asken Ace’ Jobes. With this road work and a short flight around home in an evening the training was complete and the cock didn’t see his hen for two weeks before the race, but spent the night before basketing in the box with her, which seemed to do the trick. We had birds away at the Vire race on the same day and I wasn’t expecting the birds for at least another hour and when a blue cock dropped in I first thought he was a late comer from the other race, but to our astonishment, there in his box spinning to his hen was Champ Seventy Seven. It was an incredible feeling, with our cock being the highest recorded velocity flying over 600 miles on the day and being our single entry in the race! It was a day of mixed emotions with thoughts of my grandfather who we lost to cancer in February 2013 and I think he wouldn’t have believed it. I’d like to think he helped me out on the day. What a great pigeon and experience”.
Lewis did want to say ‘thank you’ to the convoyer, Ian French, and the MNFC for the great condition of the birds on arrival home, they had been very well looked after and a credit to the team. The birds lost no body or form on the journey, just showing how far the birds could have gone on the day. The partnership were not very forthcoming with any information regarding systems and feeding because as far as they are concerned the feeding can change dependent upon weather and the work that the bird has endured or too expected to do. The birds are not treated with s ‘one size fits all’ regime because all the birds are individuals and usually have a race program mapped out or a race in mind at the beginning of the season. The pigeons aren’t paired until the second week in February to stop the onset of the moult to early, because the longer races are becoming more interesting to the partnership. They are hoping to compete in this year’s Tarbes race in the National Flying Club, so this partnership could be ones to watch in the coming years as they are definitely flying under the radar.
Thanks to Chris Sutton for the wonderful photos. I can be contacted with any pigeon banter on telephone number: 01372 463480 or my new email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
FOOTNOTE: I would like to finish this week’s article by saying that Lewis Milne has spent several months bringing this existing British 600 mile record to the RPRA’s attention and as a consequence has created an awareness and clarified the procedure to claiming that record. Lewis, in perfect innocence and thinking he had the fastest pigeon, followed that procedure to the letter and now holds the official British 600 mile record. However since the publication of this article it has come to our attention that there were some faster pigeons in a past NRCC Saxa Vord race, with the fastest bird flying to the loft of Terry Calver of Mannington. I have had lengthy phone calls with Terry and the second fastest bird’s owner, Bill Hall, and I must say both these premier NRCC fanciers are perfect gentlemen of the highest order. Both Terry and Bill were not aware there was a 600 mile record and although their Saxa Vord pigeons were faster that Lewis’ pigeon, they are happy that Lewis has the official record. Lewis has offered to help Terry through the procedure so his pigeon can quite rightly now claim the 600 mile record. In the next few weeks I’m going to travel up the Suffolk to visit Terry Calver and Bill Hall with the view to doing some articles. I look forward to that as it has been a while since we have featured the great NRCC. This whole issue has come about in perfect innocence from all sides involved! The thing that has pleased me personally right through this whole issue is that all involved have acted like gentlemen and tried to sort it out in a good sporting and friendly manner. - KEITH MOTT
Text by Keith Mott www.keithmott.com
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