Like any self-respecting athlete, racing pigeons also have their Olympics!
Unlike the Olympic Games of us humans, those of pigeons take place every two years and not in person. In fact, it is an award given based on the results obtained in the previous two years (with the exception of some special categories).
This particular competition is rightly considered the most important at an international level, above all because it brings together most countries from all over the world. With the 2022 Oradea (Romania) Olympics we have reached the 37th edition and in 2024 the 38th will take place in Maastricht (Holland) and, as mentioned above, the location chosen varies with each edition and only serves to reward the athletes.
The goal of fanciers is to participate, but qualifying is not at all simple, there are in fact specific requirements to be met. The qualified pigeons must have achieved, within their country of origin, in the two years preceding the competition requirements recognized and determined by the International Columbophile Federation.
But now let's get into the specifics...
The Olympic requirements
Each Olympics is made up of different categories, all of which can be traced back to two disciplines, STANDARD and SPORT.
The categories belonging to the STANDARD mainly differ from each other only by the years of the pigeons and their sex. The participants are in fact subjectively evaluated for their physical appearance by an international jury. This mechanism is the same that is used to determine qualification at a national level.
As far as SPORT is concerned, the categories are divided into:
OLD PIGEON
The details of each category are summarized in the image below.
INFOGRAFICA
Curiosities from the world of the Olympics
There are over 70 countries participating in the Olympic Games and the latest to be added to this list is San Marino, winning three pigeons in the YOUNGSTER category.
The best Italian placing ever was obtained by "Bolt" by Giovanni Sassi, winning the SPEED category in the 2015 Budapest Olympics.
The 9th place of "Sagan" earned Luca Campanini and Eddy van Der Pijl the best Italian placing of the last Olympics (Oradea 2022).
In the SPORT categories, the most successful nation of the last edition was Poland with five first places.
Digital Pigeons photographed 10 Italian pigeons that participated in the latest editions of the Olympics.
