The Europa Classic One Loft Race takes place in September when pigeons from such far flung places as South Africa, Kuwait and Las Vegas are released just outside Edinburgh, Scotland for a 300 mile, approximately 7 1/2 hour, race back to the Peterstone loft. Derek Nicholls of Europa Classic says the race attracts a broad array of competitors from multimillionaire fanciers to syndicates of working class guys who pay an entry fee of 200 pounds for three birds.

This year’s winner was Jeff Davies, a labourer from south Wales, who along with other competitors watched his winning bird drop into the loft on the big screen. Mr Davies who won 30,000 pounds ($62,000) stated “When the identification number came up I went bananas. I don’t have any plans for the money - winning a classic like this means a lot to me.”

The Royal Pigeon Racing Association has an annual cash flow of 1.2 million pounds ($2.5 million) and employs a staff of thirty.

Locally, Tony Correia of Victoria’s Capital City Racing Pigeon Club, Jeff Mawbey of the Mid-Island club and Wayne Daigneault of Abbotsford’s Mountain Pacific club have all confirmed that racing losses this year have far exceeded the past. The Victoria club ended up cancelling the racing season after 85% of entries failed to return. Correia speculates that radio waves from cell phone transmitters jam the bird’s ability to navigate. Pigeons are thought to navigate using the sun and tiny magnetic particles in their beaks to sense the earth’s magnetic field. Scientists say short- wave radiation has an undefined negative impact, causing racing pigeons to try to avoid transmitters. While 15% of pigeons are typically lost in a race to predators, bad weather or poor conditioning, the possible causes for “smash races” where only a few birds return, is a mystery.