With the release last Saturday, the Royal Spanish Pigeon Farming Federation put the final touch on 24 days of competition to find out the champion of this new edition of the Cup of His Majesty The King.
“Copa y Toque”, the Sevillian pigeon owned by the Naranjo family, won the first prize, which includes a financial prize of 20,000 euros. In this way, “Andalusia not only recovered a competition that had not been held in the autonomous community for 19 years, but can boast of being a champion,” said the territorial president of the Andalusian Pigeon Farming Federation, Rafael Martínez.
It has been a very even championship, with different circumstances and situations typical of this type of sports where the ones who end up deciding are the birds, «they are animals and they don’t think,» say the most experts every time that during the different releases decisions had to be made. to continue with the test because a pigeon did not want to fly, because it had just laid an egg or because it landed on the side of the highway, with the obvious dangers that this posed for the attendees and for the sporting pigeons.
But nothing is left to chance and the detailed organization in charge of the National Federation and the San Esteban de Fines Club has allowed the different releases to be carried out within normality, where the best of the national pig farming participated; One hundred pigeons coming from all over Spain delighted the attendees and whose outcome was not defined until the end.
The releases took place on Tuesdays and Saturdays, days in which the municipality of Fines has constantly received around a thousand fans of a minority sport «that aims to continue growing with a very clear recruitment policy among young people and the retirees, who are invited to come closer and experience sensations,” according to President Javier Prades, who invited young people to participate in the championship that will take place in the Valencian town of Alcántara from June 22 to July 11. ; “If we want to last, we have to sow,” said the head of the RFEC.
For his part, the mayor of Fines, Rodrigo Sánchez, was satisfied for having been the municipality chosen by the federation to hold this championship, «we of Fines feel grateful for the consideration towards our town, satisfied with and for the organization and obviously satisfied because they have been days where the movement in sectors of our economy has been noticed with the presence of hundreds of pigeon lovers coming from all over the country,» said the first mayor who presented a statuette of Liberty to the members of the organization.
The next national championship in its 73rd edition already has a new headquarters. This is the town of Jacarilla, province of Alicante.
