DeDarren

The Midlands National Flying Club's 2008 Young Bird National was won into Liverpool this year with a Willie Jacobs I'm almost certain of it, by a fella named 'Bunny' Warren, racing as Warren, Garrity and Son I think. Bunny is an exceptional pigeon flier in these parts and has his finger well and truly on the pulse when it comes to what's winning and what's not.

He's got some real toppers in all of his breeds has Jaap!

Hey there, you might also like to check out a really good guy many pigeon folk in the U.K. know of, and that is Jaap Van Alphen http://www.totalpigeonbreeding.com Jaap is the curator of some outstanding old Dutch and Belgian bloodlines, including the Horemans you desire and an excellent colony of Gus Hofkens, with which he has swept the board in his home country of the Netherlands, and he doesn't charge the Earth either. He has stalls at the most of the major U.K. pigeon shows too. I just got some nice Gerard Koopman hens from him a couple of weeks back, roll on breeding time!

I just found the following excerpt on the Herbot's website: http://www.herbots.be/racing_herbots/news/content.asp?id=49 For those interested, it may make for good reading during these dark winter months? The fastest pigeons of the world. That’s what Piet de Weerd told about the pigeons of Staf Van Reet from Mol. And indeed Staf owned a super breeding couple in the seventies. The cock was the Genopte Witpen of ’68 and the hen was a Janssen-hen (out of the line Halve Fabry), namely the Blue Breeding-hen of ’69. This couple gave among others the famous Daniël (named after a good bycicle-racer Daniël Willems). The Daniël, 6635973/76), was good for 57 first prizes on the speed races and this with rain, sunshine, wind or no wind, in fact in all kind of weather. His brother, the Prince, 6664391/72, was almost as good his brother. He flew 32 first prizes and when he couldn’t win he always won the second prize after his brother the Daniël. Another brother, the Dikke Prince (6710998/74) won 28 first prizes and the Lichte Prince won 29 victories. Grondelaers is always there when a kind of miracle happens. So an evening in 1978 he went, together with his friend Marcel Cretskens, to Mol with a lot of money in his pockets. At that time Staf didn’t have any light on his loft and so they brought each star into the house one by one, to take a good look at the birds. Almost immediately Jan preferred the Prince but this one wasn’t for sale so Jan had to play some tricks too. "How much would this bird be worth" wondered Jan. Staf answered that he thought that this one would be worth 30.000 Bfr. but he didn’t know that Jan was full of tricks. Later in the evening a friend a Staf came by and Jan said: "Listen now, Staf mentioned a price for the Prince but he doesn’t want to sell hem to me". The friend, who didn’t knew about the previous event and played along with Jan and he answered: "Come on Staf, a word is a word. I thought I knew you…". After some more discussion, Jan replied that he would give him the double price but then you have to give me a his sister along". So… the Prince moved to Opglabbeek where he became father of the Stuka’s. The Stuka II flew 5 x first in good company. The Stuka I, 5185502/79, won 13 times and afterwards he became an excellent breeder. Also the hen, which is a nest-sister of the Prince, is a miracle on the breeding loft. She gave among others the 5023706/82 that won the 1st provincial from La Souterraine. Later on Jan also got the Daniël in his breeding section to breed together with the new owner, namely the Verheye from Mol. Out of this together-breed, Daniël x daughter Orléans II, the famous Raket was born with Jan, with ringnumber 5172250/86.

Does anybody remember 'Observer' aka Leslie Davidson, Leslie was a one-off!

My mate, John Russell who hails from Moorends in Doncaster was over in Belgium in 1987 with his Dad and the legendary Alwyn Paddey, who was looking for distance pigeons at the time and they ended up not far from Mol. Upon attempting to ask a local about who had the best pigeons in the area, the man gave them directions to Staf Van Reet's residence, saying, 'the English men go there already' in his broken Anglo/Flemish dialect. John and his Dad were impressed enough and duly purchased a number of these what turned out to be absolutely fantastic racing machines and I think it was a year or two later after having made a few waves and ripples with the racing success of these first van Reets, John was attending a big pigeon do in the Derbyshire region, and he was confronted by a furious Dave Allen (who was literally spitting feathers by all accounts) who demanded to know who had put John in touch with the Master of Mol. The rest as they say, is history. John's pigeons have to be seen to be believed, a true family of velvet dark'uns, blues and pencils (genopte's) with the odd pied and they swept the board in the South Yorkshire region for many years, for both himself and beyond, as far afield as Ireland, for the very fortunate friends who had them from him. Indeed, in 2008, over 20 years since that chance happening, John's family of Van Reets are still topping the Federation for others, in the fiercely competitive city of Liverpool against the modern day super strains of Walter Dockx, Kees Bosua, Lindelauf, Roland Janssen, Adrie Van De Rhee and Willie Jacobs to name but a few. To my way of thinking, the Van Reets are A1 navigators, with an impeccable constitution and the innate ability of being able to find the quickest route possible from A to Z. Work them hard and they will most definitely reward you. The North West Combine's longest race of the programme, Niort, which is roughly 500 long and arduous miles into Liverpool, was also conquered by a (Mardon) Staf Van Reet for a Mr Harry Apps a few years back and this against the best of the North West's distance men and their highly-priced, tough as iron, Smaragd and Vlekje 'International' offspring. Be it Hession, Allen, Russell, Pallatt, Mardon, or Louella - long live the Staf Van Reet racing pigeon!