Pigeon Racing

Pigeon Racing is the sport of releasing specially trained homing pigeons, which then return to their home lofts over a carefully measured distance, with the time each bird takes to cover the distance measured and its rate of travel calculated and compared against the other pigeons in the race to determine the fastest. The sport uses a specific breed developed for the purpose, the Racing Homer, conditioned for races ranging from around 100 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers, and because races can be won or lost by seconds, timing methods have ranged from the traditional rubber ring placed into a specially designed clock to newer RFID tags that record arrival time automatically. Though definite proof is lacking, there is reason to believe the sport may date back as far as 220 AD: the Mishnah records that pigeon racers were forbidden from bearing witness, the Sultan of Baghdad set up a pigeon post system in AD 1150, and Genghis Khan used pigeons to carry messages for his military intelligence. The sport achieved wide popularity in Belgium in the mid nineteenth century, where fanciers developed pigeons specially bred for fast flight and long endurance, called Voyageurs, from which the modern sport largely descends.