VOA News
Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 10:10 pm UTC Posted 2 weeks ago
A collection of more than 200 racing pigeons has sold for a world record $1.8 million at a two-day auction in Belgium thanks to wealthy bidders from China, where betting on the sport has become increasingly popular.
Auction organizer Pigeon Paradise said on its website that one bidder paid $205,000 for a bird named Blue Prince. The prized fowl was one of the 218 birds that were the property of late racing enthusiast and expert breeder, Pros Roosen, who died last August. PiPa said other prominent birds in Roosen's colony sold for between $41,000 and $102,000.
Belgian-bred racing pigeons are considered the best in the world. The Associated Press quotes a senior PiPa official as saying there are Chinese with newly acquired wealth who are eager to invest in luxury items, including topflight racing pigeons.
Gambling on pigeon races is a lucrative business in East Asia, particularly in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. That means avian athletes with impressive bloodlines, such as Roosen's Blue Prince, were not purchased to race, but to breed with other highly pedigreed pigeons to create new generations of champion flyers for their new Chinese owners.
Archaeological evidence indicates that humans have valued the remarkable homing talents of pigeons for at least 5,000 years. The birds have been used to ferry military information between long distances from ancient times through the World Wars of the 20th century. However, pigeon racing in Europe did not come into popularity until the 1700s.
It reached its zenith in the first half of the 20th century when pigeons would start a race from a location as far away as 1,000 kilometers from where they were based. The one that reached its home loft the fastest was declared the winner.
Bird racing was so popular after World War One that an international federation was created, and the first Pigeon Olympics was held in 1938. Although pigeon racing in Europe is no longer the craze of decades past, the 32nd Pigeon Olympiad opens later this month in Poland.
Read more ...
