The Australian National Racing Pigeon Board (ANRPB) is pleased to announce that as of this year (2023), they are looking to award an Australian pigeon that achieves the best performance in an individual Federation and or Combine of Clubs that has a minimum membership of 20 competing fanciers with the title of “National Ace Pigeon”.

As federations generally recognise and present an award/trophy to the owner of their Federation’s “Bird of the Year”, the ANRPB would like to encourage all Federations and/or Combine Clubs forward the best three results of their individual organisation’s “Bird of the Year” to the ANRPB who will mathematically compare all nominated birds using the European method adopted and recognised around the world as being the preferred method to determine an overall “National Ace Bird” that will compare large federation bird entries from various locations along with small bird entries from smaller organizations.

They do this by working out the “Lowest Mathematical Coefficient” for each nominated bird over a number of races that do not favour or discriminate whether the nominated bird competes against a large or small number of birds.

This is done by dividing the place taken by the nominated bird (for each of the 3 best results submitted) and dividing each result by the number of birds in each race and then multiplying that number by 100 – For example: the said bird takes 10th place racing against 3650 birds, mathematically the lowest coefficient for this race looks like this; 10 divided  by 3650 multiple by 100 = 0.2739726. This then is the “Coefficient” for this race.

You do this for the other two race results, then add them together and divide by 3 to get the Average Lowest Coefficient for the 3 races. Which would then identify the winning pigeon. e.g. for the second race this bird may take 2nd place against 2900 birds and the coefficient for that race would be 0.0689655 and for the third race result submitted this bird may have run 5th with a bird entry of 3200 the coefficient for this race being 0.15625 these three results are then added together and divided by 3 e.g. 0.2739726 + 0.0689655 + 0.15625 = 0.4991881 divide this by 3 = 0.166396 this being the lowest average coefficient that would demine the winner.

Sponsorship has already been secured for both award categories that will include Trophies (Kindly donated by Pat Arcella of San Remo Lofts), a Photograph and a Certificate of Merit for the two category winners along with Certificates of Merit to be presented to the Top 10 nominated birds in each of the categories, “Short to Middle” and “Middle to Long”.

These awards will provide the opportunity for fanciers to compete on a level playing field with the top ten winning birds in each category gaining national recognition.

The ANRPB would like to wish all fanciers all the best for 2023 and look forward to receiving your bird’s nomination.

Note: In each of the categories, “Short to Middle Distance” (80km to 550km) and “Middle to Long Distance” (551 to 900+km) the nominated pigeon can be clocked twice from the same race point/distance, but the third race must be from a different race point/distance to be eligible.