Major one-loft races across the world have been targets for Workington fancier Peter Dobie for almost 25 years.
Peter, who races from his Stainburn loft in the Seaton RBL club with Ralph Palmer, entered his first pone in 2001 – a South African Million Dollar race.
He was racing at Dearham with his late uncle Dickie and that’s why for these major one loft events he enters as R and P Dobie in tribute.
On Saturday, Peter had the pleasure of seeing two of his entries pick up money prizes in the Algarve Golden Race.
For this one he sent 10 young birds and after six races out to 200 miles, he got four of them to the final which was over 300 miles.
The initial entry had been 7,200 and after a couple of tricky hot-spot races there were 2,814 left for the final.
Peter took three members of the family to Monte Gordo for four days – two nieces and one of their boyfriends.
He says: “As usual there was a massive crowd from all over Europe with plenty of seating, large screens and a refreshment marquee.
“The race was won, as the norm, by a German pigeon owned by Johann Mehler which arrived five minutes clear along with a Dutch pigeon owned by Jelle Jellema.
“It was fantastic when my pigeon arrived 13 minutes later. She’s been christened Nightfall and was the first British bird out of 188 in the final race. She was 35th open and won 1,500 euros.
“To be honest I think I was more chuffed for the family group with me as it was really exciting for us all.
“I got another in 230th to win another 300 euros and by Sunday lunchtime I had all four of mine back so it was a really enjoyable and successful race.”
Nightfall was bred from two German pigeons that Peter bought at last year’s Golden Race auctions. They were both bred by a previous winner Thomas Kornelius.
To cap the weekend off Peter bought back Nightfall at Sunday’s auction for 750 euros, half of which he got back as the breeder/owner.
But he couldn’t bring her back on the plane, of course. He has to go through the various regulations and expects to have her in about five to six weeks.
