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That's for Jim, says Fed topper Chem!
Steve Chambers clocked his 16th West Cumberland Federation topper from the recent Cheltenham race – and immediately dedicated the win to his brother Jim.
He said: “I wasn’t going to send to the race because Jim had died but my wife Eileen persuaded me to and win it for him.”
Jim, 71, had also been a pigeon fancier but hadn’t kept the birds for the last few years, although he maintained a keen interest in them.
Steve, who flies in partnership with wife Eileen and daughter Gemma, in the Keekle club, has now won four old bird Federation races, to go with the 12 young bird Feds he has been successful in.
The winning pigeon is a two-year-old chequer cock, a Jos Thone off birds Steve obtained from Ian Stafford. This is the third race that he has won – previously winning Keekle club from Appleton and Stafford.
“It’s funny, though, because he’s twice come home in a box after ending up in Wales as a young bird and as a yearling, and both times the race was from Wollaston.
“I nearly didn’t send him to Wollaston this year, because I thought he must have a bad line out of there but actually they brought the birds back to Stafford and he was fine,” says Steve.
Last season Steve – who is highly regarded as a young bird specialist in the West Cumberland Federation – had 14 birds come together and nine of them were the same way bred as the latest Fed winner.
Generally, though, the Cheltenham race won’t be remembered for the right reasons. Steve had 19 birds back out of 37 and 50% was one of the better returns.
Losses were heavy, with the majority of lofts short of between a half and two thirds of the birds they sent.
The decision had been taken to postpone the race 24 hours to race on Sunday, but when they were liberated at 7-15am on Sunday in a fresh west wind no-one could have predicted the disappointing race which was to unfold.
Although the early arrivals were back in the estimated time, the numbers quickly dried up and fanciers were waiting all day for their birds to return – but a good number failed to make it.
So what went wrong on Sunday? Did the birds run into bad weather en-route and try to fly round it, or did they come into contact with a Welsh Federation which had been liberated at St. Albans earlier in the day?
Either is possible, and certainly dozens of West Cumbrian pigeons have been reported in Wales – all over the Principality actually, from Swansea up to Anglesey. But the Welsh Fed only had 1,100 birds away while the Two Feds Amal had three times that number.
The general feeling seems to be that it was the weather which blacked out the normal route and in trying to go round it the Cumbrian birds were carried into Wales.
West Cumberland Fed winner Steve Chambers had three reported in Wales, and he also had another picked up dead below a peregrine’s nest on a Preston Crematorium.
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