FINAL RACE FROM 530 KM TGPR 2019
875 pigeons were released Nongkai province, 530 km northeast of the loft in Bangkok City at 7.00 am on January 8, 2020. This number reflected a big loss of 757 birds from 1,362 birds (or 46.39%) entered in the smash race from 430 km two weeks ago due to bad weather. There were 474 local pigeons in the final and 401 birds from international participants. The foreign birds had a better percentage of survival rate, 35.65% of the original registered 1,125 birds from abroad compared to 31.5 % of the Thai birds.
The weather condition on the final race was even worse, i.e. very hot and poor visibility with very strong side wind that blew the birds to the west. The first drop was a local pigeon, R19-13931 which took 8 hours to make home at the speed of 1,103.5838 mpm. This small black cock was entered by Mr. Vinai Kamolkasemsilp, the second time champion who won this prize and the King Cup ten years ago. The second birds arrived almost seven minutes later at the speed of 1,088.6340 mpm. Its owner was combination Dickman-Strogetges which also won the 5th prize in final the year before. This pigeon was first among foreign contingent and thus entitled to the Royal Princess Cup as well. The 3rd prize went to a Thai combination, Rai Prom Dan, it came 20 minutes after the second bird at 1,045.3663 mpm.
In all, there were only 60 day-birds (33 local and 27 foreign) which confirmed how difficult it was to win TGPR’s final race as the past three years had seen less than a hundred day-birds every year. 358 more birds came back in the second day and in all 482 birds made it home in three days.
