Weird Asia News
1 Feb 2011
Status symbols usually don’t vary across the globe. They usually include: expensive jewels, luxurious yachts, stately mansions and private jets, just to name a few.
But pigeons?
That last one may come as a shocker to some and may even break a new and different kind of mold. A very rich Chinese buyer recently paid $200,000 for a racing pigeon, named Blue Prince, at a Belgium auction, setting a new world record.
Highly pedigreed, (he better be at that price), the bird is of the elitist, crème de la crème class of Belgian racing pigeons. This same auction recently sold a colony of 218 such birds for $1.8 million!
Pigeon racing has a long and noble history in Western Europe dating back to the days of ancient Rome. It was the exclusive pastime of royalty and an old legend tells the tale of pigeon bearing news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo to the Rothschild family.
The pigeon race is a simple procedure. Birds are released hundreds of miles from their home or “loft” and the first birds back win the race. Immensely popular in China, a land of many gamblers, the races have become sponsored events with big pay-offs, like horse racing in America.
No one can say for sure why this sport hasn’t climaxed in the United States, but some say it is connected to the fact that most Americans think of pigeons as city scavengers, or a Woody Allen so aptly put it, “rats with wings.”
One famous American, namely, boxer, Mike Tyson, has his own pigeon-racing show. That just might be enough celebrity for the sport to catch on in the United States.
But whether it does or it doesn’t, $200,000 for a pigeon is way beyond chicken feed.
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