writes SARAH HUDSON

A FILM which delves into the world of pigeon racing is taking the Boord brothers to new heights

Pigeon racing never rated as a hobby for the Boord brothers - Craig and Jarrod - growing up on the family farm at Lurg, just outside Benalla.

"I was into motorbikes," says Craig.

"I made my first film about motorbikes in year 10. I rode the bike and Jarrod filmed it. I put the titles and voice-over on it in the editing suite at school."

But it's pigeon racing, not motorbikes, that has become the brothers' passion.

Not through actual racing, but through a short film, Little Ripper, which has won them industry accolades, is being expanded into a full-length feature film, has seen them travel around the globe and has even opened doors to the Queen.

Most recently the 19-minute film, which Craig, 33, directed and co-produced with Jarrod, was awarded the best documentary at this year's St Kilda Film Festival and placed in the top seven at the Austin Film Festival in Texas.

For Craig, the film has meant pigeons have become his life.

"The one common misconception about pigeon racing is that these birds are like the ones you find on churches or on the street," Craig says.

"But they are like Thoroughbred racing horses. They are immaculate. Their owners clean their cages twice a day and they are properly medicated.

"These are elite sports animals that can fly up to 60 miles (100km) an hour for 400 miles (650km) no worries."

Craig admits his entree into the curious sport did not follow an obvious path.

Following his initial interest in video and filming at Benalla College, Craig - who is five years older than Jarrod - studied film and television at Swinburne University in Melbourne.

Because he worked throughout the three-year course on his own projects, which included video clips and corporate work, he left university with enough money to establish his own company, Streamline Media.

Jarrod, who is a stills photographer, joined in as co-director.

"We didn't always get along together but when we reached a certain age we got along well and now it really is a team effort," Craig says.

"We had a lot of corporate work but around 2009 we thought we wanted to do something creative but we needed a topic.

"A friend's uncle was a champion pigeon racer and he gave us a way to get into this sub-culture, the inner sanctum."

For a year the brothers followed three leading pigeon racers: an 80-year-old retiree living in Ocean Grove; one of the top racers in Australia from Cranbourne; and a young up-and-comer in Ballarat.

"These guys are so passionate and dedicated about their sport. There's no other competition or sport like it and that's what's most touching, what comes through in the documentary," Craig says.

However, Little Ripper has been a labour of love, a self-funded documentary that they've sent to dozens of film festivals around the globe - including to Austin, Texas, and our own St Kilda Film Festival - and as such, it was never going to earn them a living.

So from the outset, the Boord brothers knew they had to set their sights higher and since finishing Little Ripper have sought investors for a full-length feature film on pigeon racing.

Fast, Feathered and Fearless is now their focus, a film they hope to release in the middle of next year.

Where Little Ripper cast the lens on the small Australian sport, Fast, Feathered and Fearless is taking on the globe.

And what a story there is to tell.

Craig and Jarrod have just returned from a trip to Europe, especially the global homing pigeon hotspot, Belgium, and the UK where they spent three days on the Queen's Sandringham estate with her personal pigeon keeper.

"She competes every year and this year she actually got first place," Craig says.

"In Belgium, it's like AFL there. They have the four-time world champion who has paid 130,000 ($186,000) for a racing pigeon."

The brothers' next stop is the US followed by China, where they will document the richest pigeon racing event in the world, with a prize pool of $4 million.

And finally they'll head to Thailand.

"I would love to say this is fun but it's really hard work when you just have a crew of two," Craig says.

"There have been plenty of films about pigeons before but they're about the technical side of the birds. Ours is character-based, about the passion, about the human element.

"We're confident it will have an audience because around the world there are one million pigeon racers."

So when you've spent three years of your life in the niche world of pigeon racing, where do Craig and Jarrod plan to go from here?

"There's still so much work to do in front of us with Fast, Feathered and Fearless that I can't see beyond that," Craig says. "But ultimately I'd love to do a fiction film, a real film."

By Pam Gladwin

Stambridge pigeon club sent there birds through the Essex Combine to Scotch Corner for the final and longest young bird race of the year on the 18th. September, they were liberated at 7.45am in a light north wind. 11 members sent 170 birds. Mick Waterhouse not only won the race but also was 4th. 5th. as well. In 2006 Mick decided he needed some new blood in his race team and went to see Mr Mrs Streatfield, in Snodland in Kent and brought the parents of this winning Blue Cock, he has been so pleased with these birds that he went back this year and brought some more. His forth place cock is a Lefebre Dhaenens from the late Brian Baxter stock x Ernie Alan. Mick likes the Lefebre Dhaenens, as his fifth place bird is also one but this time its parents are from Jimmy Richard stock. This pigeon was so consistent that it won the nom three times. His young birds are all left to run together some had paired up and had eggs but his winning pigeon did not have a mate. His winning birds have been sent to every young bird race. He had 100% returns all in good condition from Scotch Corner. Mick has had a great year having won old and young bird races. George Bishop was second with one of his family of Van Den Bosch pigeons. Spearpoint & Stagg was third with a Darren Peters bird and sixth with a Stuart Elvin Busschaert. I went to see Mick in his home at Ashingdon to hear about his racing this year. He told me that he has won six races as well as the Young Bird Averages. This is not an easy thing to do in the very strong Stambridge club. He started 2010 by taking the red card from Sleaford on the 10th. April. The following week from Market Rasen he went one better and was 1st. 2nd. The rest of the old bird season saw his name up in the result week after week, coming into the final old bird race he knew if he got a good bird home from Thurso he could win the old bird averages but sadly it was not to be as it turned out to be a very hard race with only a few birds home and he did not time in. Mick had told me earlier in the season when I went to take his photo that he was looking forward to young bird racing and I can see why. He has won four out of the nine races. He started with a 1st. 2nd. from Market Rasen on the 7th. August. Come September he just ran away with it 4th. September Ripon 1st 2nd, September 11th. Market Rasen 1st. 2nd. 3rd. September 18th. Scotch Corner 1st. 4th. 5th.

Mick only keeps six pairs of stock birds; he flies his old birds on widow hood and only races about 16 to 18 old birds and breeds about thirty young birds each year. I asked Mick how long he had been racing and I was surprised when he said about fifteen years. I asked him why he was such a late starter. He told me that although his Grandfather kept pigeons in Leeds when he was a young boy, and he remembers His Granddad used to have a loft in a compound at the end of the road, where he also used to keep his dog, so no one would go near the pigeons because the dog was on guard. Mick said, that was his only contact with the sport. Over the years, he never again thought about pigeons. As he got into his 50s, he began to think about having a hobby for his old age. He thought of various things and it was not until one day he went to service a boiler in the late John Tuckers home and as workman do, got chatting to the customer and John told him he was a pigeon fancier and showed him his pigeons. That started him thinking that it was something he could do then and continue to do when he retired. He was fifty Five when he started racing for the first time, He had got talking to some local fanciers, Tony Ambler and Brian Robinson and joined them in forming The Stambridge club, racing on the North road; he then moved on to the Benfleet club and later decided to have a go at South road racing and joined the Leigh on sea club. After just one year on the South, he sadly had a heart attack, thought that was the end of his racing, and resigned. His health however improved and he decided to go back to north road racing which he found that much easier to train his birds north. He rejoined the Stambridge club. and has not looked back since. He trains his birds about three times a week up to twenty-five miles. He uses garlic and tends to mix his own food along with Super Star Plus. He feeds his birds twice a day. Mick likes to pair up in January and has one round from his widow cocks and hens. He finishes breeding about a month before racing starts and that is when he starts training his widow cocks, on Friday he will let his widow cocks have there hens for an hour before basketing them for the race. His young birds are all put on the darkness system. He told me that he intends buying ETS for next year as catching the pigeons in the loft as they come home is getting harder every year. Already quite a few Stambridge members use the ETS so that will be easy for him.

I asked him what he thought was his best performance, and he said winning the Essex Central Federation and he told me that in 2007 he was 1st. and 3rd. Essex Central Federation from Sleaford. on the 4th. August. Nine clubs, 71 members and 1646 birds. I am not surprised that race was his best. It is not easy to win the Essex Central Fed where he lives. He won it with a Jimmy Richards chequer cock. He showed me the trophies that he has won in his 15 years; he may have been a late starter but a quick learner. As I left him, he was already sorting out his pairings for next year. He would like to thank Jimmy Richards and Mr Mrs Streatfield for the excellent birds that they selected for him. and as we all know the most important person in any club is the secretary, in this case it is Paul Devoto, he took the job on when no one else wanted it and has done a fantastic job. so Mick says thanks.

Pam Gladwin
Phone me on 01702542019 or 07958463095
Email: pamelagladwin@yahoo.co.uk

By MARK LAWTON mlawton@pioneerlocal.com

Adam Hajduga grabs a pigeon from the coop he's built in the garage behind his Franklin Park house. The pigeon is quiet though Hajduga, 33, turns it every which way while showing off a band around one leg that contains an electronic chip.

When the pigeons return to the coop from a race, the chip notifies a computer. Race organizers then pull out their calculators and divide distance by time traveled to figure which pigeon flew home the fastest.

From 6 to 7 a.m. several days a week, he trains his pigeons before he heads out to that day's work as a general contractor.

His grandfather in Poland raised pigeons, as did his father. Every Saturday during the summer season, Hajduga ships his pigeons along with a truck full of others to a location anywhere from 100 to 500 miles west.

Pigeon racing is an activity with a single starting gate and 1,000 finishing lines. For unknown reasons pigeons recognize where they were bred and fly back there.

Pigeon racing may go as far back as the second century. In contemporary times it dates back to the mid-1800s in Belgium. Such pigeons, Columba livia domestica, were used to carry messages in the first and second world wars and by Reuter's news service in its early years.

The sport remains more popular in Europe, where as many as 75,000 pigeons may compete in a single race. Still, there are about 250 pigeon racers in the Chicago area who belong to the American Pigeon Racing Union, one of three pigeon organizations in the area.

In Franklin Park there are four or five pigeon breeders and racers. The sport was temporarily outlawed in the village during the previous administration, though the Pedersen administration reversed that in 2009.

While racing pigeons are the same breed as pigeons that eat bread crumbs off sidewalks, they are still very different, said Dan Andronic, a Franklin Park resident and owner of Belmont Breed & Seed, a pigeon store in Chicago.

"It's a stray dog and a pet dog," Andronic said. "A lot of people go, 'Oh no, they are going to poop all over my house and car.' They don't do that. Most pigeon fliers are very disciplined people. They clean their coops twice a day."

Andronic's father raised pigeons in Romania, but Andronic didn't get interested in racing until 1999 when a friend in Glenview asked if he wanted a couple. Up until that time Andronic had raised rabbits.

"It's just a weird sport and you fall in love with it," Andronic said. "When your bird beats 2,000 other birds, you're jumping for joy."

Training racing pigeons takes a lot of effort. When his son was 17, Andronic had him out at 4 a.m. several mornings a week, driving the pigeons an hour away then releasing them.

"They call it a second wife, a pigeon," Andronic said. "If not training, you're in the coop cleaning, medicating them, watching them."

Homing pigeons are usually bred toward the beginning of the year. A hen and a cock are put together and have two eggs. Incidentally, there are no divorces among pigeons, which mate for life.

Pigeons will work cheap, racing for water and food. For those who prefer purchasing to breeding, pigeons sell for as little as $50 and as much as $150,000 in the U.S. and more in Europe.

Like Olympic athletes, different birds do better at different distances. There are sprinters, marathoners and those somewhere in between. Pigeons can fly as fast as 75 mph.

It can be a risky business for the birds.

"You might lose them," Hajduga said. "They could hit wires, go the wrong direction."

As he speaks a group of about a dozen pigeons land on the roof of his garage and jerkily walk through cubbyholes in the roof back into to the coop.

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