Over View of 1970

[Administrator]

IRISH ARCHIVES
By Adie McCormick
http://www.pigeonnetwork.com

Many regular readers of the weekly column within the Racing Pigeon will no doubt, be wondering has Adie hit his head and went back in time? Well no, for 2009 I have decided to work through a mountain of achieved material that is lurking about in paper back format. All this old information and stats I find invaluable and as a fancier in my mid 30’s most of it I have never seen, never mind read before.

With the new age of the world wide web you can go into any search engine on any computer and find anything your looking for, provided of course that someone has made it available on the web, for instance put Ronnie Williamson into your search engine you will find material upon material about this man’s racing achievements, but for instance put in Nelson Corry winner of the Kings Cup in 1969, Billy McCluggage winner of the Kings Cup in 1970, you will struggle to find info, with this in mind and looking upon trying to protect and equally make all the old Irish Pigeon racing material easily accessible to whoever wants to access it. I will be taking a year out of my weekly up to date racing column which will now be put together and submitted by my father “Homer” each week in the RP. I myself will work as you will have noticed of last week bringing you the reader some info relating to all the great races and racers from the year 1970 onwards. There is pages upon pages of material, a mountain to be precise, but once it is all recorded and re-typed and put onto our website http://www.pigeonnetwork.com it will be there for all to see, and read when you wish to do so.

A lot of the material will only be available to read on the website for the reason if I was to submit it all in my Achieves Column in the RP we would never be caught up to the present day, so I am hoping to cover a year a week, or if the substance is too great and interesting, I will spread the content over a couple of weeks for you to read in paper back format.

If there are any fanciers out there who have any old archive material that you would like to see published and made available on the web, please send it on to me along with your address so as I can have it sent back to you once I have it copied. Even if it goes back further than 1970, I stated 1970 as this is as far as the material base I have goes back, but certainly the earlier the information obviously the more precious it becomes. My address is at the end of the column.

This week we have 1970, a year in which 1966 World Cup holders England were dumped out of the Cup in Mexico at the hands of Germany in the quarter finals, who after falling behind 2-0 went on to win 3-2 after scoring the winner in the second period of Extra Time. In the air the Boeing 747 had its first scheduled flight. On the race track the world famous “Nijinsky” ridden by Lester Piggott and trained by Vincent O’Brien in Ireland won the English Triple Crown. Back in Ireland Dana won the Eurovision Song Contest with ‘All Kinds of Everything’ and as for the pigeons they were also making the news, as an outbreak of ‘fowl pest’ meant that no pigeons were permitted in Southern Ireland, this happened in the middle of the O/Bird season of that year which meant an extra couple of cross channel races where re-scheduled into the programme.

It was to be a year that seen fanciers from Ireland competing from Beauvais for the first time with 453 pigeons entered in the Vaux-Usher International Race with 6 gallant pigeons making it on the day with the winning pigeon clocked by Bertie Goudy of Muckamore. The famous Smyth Bros of Ballymena finished 2nd Open Irish Section, and had another arrival on the day.

1970 once again proved difficult with excellent racing experienced up to Okehampton but from Penzance to Nantes it was far from satisfactory such has been the difficult flying from Nantes at the AGM of the Flying Club in 1970 they took a vote as to a late liberation from Nantes to see if that would help the number of arrivals home, with myself being a past member of the Flying Committee I heard this idea mooted about in 2008 from a fancier or two. But as someone one said not all birds rise at the same time on the 2nd morning which in a sense, doesn’t make it an honest race so to speak.

The main race winners included Fettis & Lynass of Castlereagh in Belfast winners of the Ulster Federation O/B Derby from Ashford 360 miles, also winning the famous Miller Gold Cup (only two birds were clocked on the day). We then have McClintock Bros of Ballymena & District winners of the NIPA O/Bird Derby from Dinard with “Billy’s Gift” flying 470 miles. George McKinstry of Newtownbreda won the East Down Combine Derby from Dinard flying 445 miles and finally in my highlights of what I have in paper back we have Billy McCluggage & Son of Larne & District, the winners of 1st Open INFC and Kings Cup from Nantes with “Inver King” doing velocity 765

Below this post you will find a number of short stories based upon these exceptional winners of 1970 and please should you have any material about you that you would like to see published as mentioned above, please forward it on.