Poznan 2024, the national race of Transylvania

Although Transylvania is one of the most difficult areas in the country to compete in the marathon races, the pigeon fanciers here do not give up and, year after year, manage to fulfill their dream of achieving results in the distance categories as well. A national marathon race is also organized in this province, in the 2024 season this is Poznan National, which took place on July 20.

Even if it does not have the scope of the other national races in Romania, Poznan National gave the opportunity to pigeon fans from Transylvania to measure their strength at a full-fledged marathon race. The responsibility for organizing the contest fell to the Brașov Branch, and the participation was quite numerous under the conditions that the province of Transylvania entails. Thus, 1,382 pigeons were engaged and 321 pigeon fanciers from eight counties (Cluj, Bistrița Năsăud, Alba, Mureș, Sibiu, Harghita, Brașov and Covasna) participated. However, only the Cluj and Alba branches met the classification criteria at the local level (50 breeders and 250 pigeons).

The Cluj tandem of Eszeki and Fornade won first place on the launch

The competition distances of the participants in the Poznan National race were from +700 km to approximately +900 km. The pigeons were released at 06:18 and one of them, cock RO-2022-0292119, managed a truly fantastic flight. The pigeon belongs to the tandem of Eszeki and Fornade from Cluj and his performance is not only in the fact that he won the first place in the competition, but also in the manner in which he achieved this result. He was recorded on the clock on the first day of the competition, at 17:18:33, thus managing to arrive one hour and two minutes ahead of the next ranked in his county. The distance he had to fly was 754 km.

Team Eszeki and Fornade

The race podium in the pigeon classification was completed by Dorel Bejenaru, from Sibiu (833 km), with the hen RO-2022-0648069, arrived at 18:45:38, and by Sorin Cotîrla, from Cluj (758 km), with the cock RO-2023-0770603, arrived at 18:20:52.

Sorin Cotîrla is also the one who takes the first place in the ranking of breeders. He employed 18 pigeons and managed to rank 5 of them. The team did it with the first two pigeons that arrived at the loft, the cock shown above and the hen RO-2022-0306144, arrived at 19:09:50, which took 12th place on the launch. In the same general ranking of breeders, second place went to Dacian Bugnar, and third place to Dan Sebastian, both from the Alba Branch.

Sorin Cotîrla