With 3 national top prizes in the extreme long distance races with morning release, Ad Pegels' 'Crack' once again shows his exceptional qualities and takes 1st place in the PIPA ranking of Best Extreme Long Distance Pigeon in the Netherlands (3 prizes).

Ad with the father of his 'Crack'

The 67-year-old retiree Ad Pegels came into contact with pigeon racing as a ten-year-old boy through his brother-in-law. His brother-in-law had a transport company and was also a pigeon fancier. As a boy he often went on holiday there so he could ride with the trucks. In the evening he would go basketing and wait for the pigeons to return. This is how he became interested in pigeon racing. At the age of eighteen he started taking pigeons seriously. He then played all the events, including some overnight flights because they counted for the general championship. He was now working in agriculture, which meant that he had to work a lot of overtime and therefore had little time for caring for the pigeons. It remained that way for the rest of his working life. Nevertheless, he was always able to win his prizes well and usually ended up among the general champions. Partly due to his busy work, he switched to overnight long distance racing in 1992. Ad believes that in the long distance it is mainly about good pigeons and a little less about care.

The tribe building

Ad was friends with Arie Visser (Klaaswaal, NL), the man with the pure Bakker Barendrecht pigeons. Ad was allowed to use 24 of his old breeders aged ten years and older for one year for breeding. He also did some joint breeding with Batenburg en Zn and AP Overwater at the time. He immediately achieved good prizes with these pigeons in the extreme long distance. In 1995 he already finished fourth in the long distance in North and South Holland. 1999 and 2000 in particular were top years. In 2009, Ad was able to stop working and decided to do it one more time. He already contacted the phenomenon Arjan Beens in 2008. When asked if Arjan could help him with some eggs, he said that Ad had to call back at the end of the week. No sooner said than done and an appointment was quickly made. After a pleasant visit, Ad brought 35 eggs from all his top pigeons to Arjan. To this day, Ad is very grateful to Arjan for that and it is not without reason that he calls him a fantastic guy. He then bought some more pigeons from Arjan, such as NL08-2138103, a son of his stock cock 'Mister Moonlight'. View the complete pedigree of the '103' here. The '103' is already the father of several good racers, including NL10-1646352, 1st Extreme Long Distance Pigeon in the Netherlands (3 prizes) in the PIPA rankings. There are also some pigeons from the late Ton Bollebakker (Laren, NL) and the kind from Hein Austria via Piet vd Weijgaart. He also breeds together with Appie Pas (Denekamp, ​​NL) to perform better in the future, especially in Barcelona. Last year Ad missed out on Barcelona while he played the 35th National last year. The latest acquisitions of Appie and Ad come from Batenburg vd Merwe (Klaaswaal, NL) from the 'New Witbuik', 'New Lauriaat' and 'Special One'.

An overview of the lofts

Performance

Ad plays the classic widowhood with approximately 72 widowers, of which at least half are yearlings. So far he has played both the afternoon releases and the ZLU flights. From 2016 onwards, with a few exceptions, he only wants to play the morning releases of the ZLU. He believes that the morning releases give a fairer picture than the afternoon releases, where there is often a bit of stealing from the night. Ad had a fantastic team of yearlings this year. He entered 36 Agen/Bordeaux yearlings, sixteen of which won prizes. He brought fifteen yearlings to Narbonne ZLU that had missed out on Agen/Bordeaux. Of these, he had nine prizes, so of the 36 yearlings, 25 won prizes. He performed as follows on the ZLU flights in 2015:

Pau 18th Nat. 
St.-Vincent 38th Nat. 
Agen Bordeaux oud 683rd Nat. 
Agen Bordeaux jaarl. 332nd Int. 
Marseille 153rd Nat. 
Narbonne 53rd Int. 
Perpignan 144th Nat.

The previous years also performed well. It is nice to see that all performance is still tracked manually. Click here for the 2014 performance.

NL10-1646352 'Crack'

The absolute eye-catcher of recent years is of course the 'Crack'. He also won his prizes in the afternoon releases, but when Ad started playing him in the ZLU flights with the morning release, the situation was over. In top prizes alone he won:

2012 Nat. Marseille 8th 
2013 Nat. Pau 107th 
2014 Nat. Pau 236th 
2014 Nat. St.-Vincent 383rd 
2014 Nat. Perpignan 40th 
2015 Nat. Pau 18th 
2015 Nat. St.-Vincent 38th 
2015 Nat. Perpignan 144th

Ad with the 'Crack' NL10-1646352

With the above prizes, the 'Crack' won the following national titles:

1st Ace Pigeon Champion ZLU 2015 
2nd Ace Pigeon Pau ZLU last 3 years 
1st Best Extreme Long Distance Pigeon Netherlands (3 prizes) PIPA ranking

Ad himself says the following about the 'Crack': "It is a pleasure to have such a pigeon. It is perfectly built, always good for basketing and always on time. Wherever the wind comes from, east or west, It doesn't matter, he always comes straight from the south and doesn't deviate from his line." As mentioned, the 'Crack' comes from the '103' which is a son of one of the stock cocks of Arjan Beens. The mother of the 'Crack' is a top breeder of Ad and a 100% Nico Volkens (Bergen, NL) pigeon. Click here for the complete pedigree of the 'Crack'. In addition to the above-mentioned star, it will not surprise you that with the available breeding material, there are several top pigeons in Ad's loft. Below are some eye-catchers from recent years.

Dream becomes reality

Now that Ad has not been working for several years, he can spend a lot of time with his pigeons. Ad is a lover of regularity, and as he himself says, regularity is good for people and animals. Feeding and releasing now takes place at fixed times where this was not possible during his working life. Despite the many highlights, he is still looking for new material to take his current performance to an even higher level. Given the current breeding material, the above achievements will certainly not be the last. But above all, he remains a pigeon fancier who can enjoy what he has already achieved. Because let's be honest, a 1st prize in the PIPA ranking of Best Extreme Long Distance Pigeon is a dream for many, but a reality for Ad.