Belgian Pigeon Record Flight Earns Its Owner 1.25 Million Euros

A racing Pigeon in Belgium has recently earned a record for being the best long distance racer of all time. It also broke all records when the Pigeon was valued at 1.25 million euros during an auction recently. A Chinese buyer bought the Pigeon for the record price.

The star racing Pigeon is named Armando. Auction house Pipa short for “Pigeon Paradise” called Armando the “best Belgian long-distance pigeon of all time”. The pigeon is also named the “Lewis Hamilton of pigeons”. Before this sale, the record was 376,000 euros paid for a pigeon called Nadine.

Armando, who turns five this year, is enjoying his retired life and has already fathered a number of chicks. “It was unreal, the feeling - it was something out of this world”, Nikolaas Gyselbrecht, the CEO of Pipa said during the moment someone put down a bid of more than 1 million euros.

Gyselbrecht also said, “In our wildest dreams, we had never hoped for a price like that. We hoped for around €400,000 to €500,000, and we only dreamed of €600,000”.

An expert on Pigeon also wrote at the website Pigeon Paradise, “Earlier this week it became clear that Armando would be the most expensive pigeon ever sold in an online auction. However, no one expected that the magical cap of a million euros would be pulverized”.

Pigeon Paradise did not though officially declare the real buyer of the Pigeon, according to the Belgian news agency Belga, a Chinese buyer bought the pigeon.

Armando was just one of more than a hundred birds sold by Belgian breeder Joel Verschoot. Verschoot’s farm of pigeons is located in Ingelmunster, in the western part of Belgium. Last week, the Verschoot family had sold around 178 pigeons for around 2 million euros.

Homing pigeons are raced by releasing them sometimes hundreds of kilometer away from home, with the first back home winning. Racing Pigeons is a tradition in Britain, Belgium, parts of France and the Netherlands, although the tradition has been going into decline. Now with the interest from Asian buyers in recent years gave the tradition, a new lease of life.

Armando is also an extraordinary Pigeon. In all the last three races of his life, which include the 2018 Ace Pigeon championship, the 2019 Pigeon Olympiad and the Angoulême, he won all of them. Now the Chinese buyer is expected to use the star pigeon to breed more champions.