There’s almost nothing some handlers won’t do to win. Competitors have been kidnapped and then offered up for ransom. Others have reportedly been smuggled on to high-speed trains to get to the finish line first. Some are said to be kept hungry so that they move quicker on race day.
This is the fast and furious world of pigeon racing in Taiwan.
The sport is globally popular and centuries old, but few scenes are as bizarre as Taiwan’s, where the stakes are high and no scheme is too complex or crafty for some. But members want things to change.
Wu Chung-ming is chair of the national pigeon racing body and his local racing association. His desk is adorned with a kitschy pigeon-shaped ashtray, near a computer mining “Pigeoncoin” cryptocurrency. Parked outside is the Tesla he bought specifically for its gull-winged doors.
“At first, I wasn’t particularly into it,” he tells the Guardian. “But once I started getting involved, I met all these really passionate people who were crazy about the sport.”
Wu is among members calling for regulation to address the shady sides of the sport and make it easier for rule-abiding competitors to compete cleanly and safely.
Taiwanese pigeon racing originated during Japanese colonial rule a century ago, later evolving into a pastime among working-class people from outside the cities.
Animals rights groups want to see pigeon racing banned while acknowledging it is deeply embedded in Taiwanese society
It is now one of the world’s largest with about 200,000 breeder-trainers and countless investors, across about 80 regional clubs racing up to a million birds a year. While the demographics mostly stayed the same, it has grown into a multimillion-dollar competitive industry, with official prize pools that can exceed NTD$30m (US$1m) a season. But it sits in a legal grey area.
“If it’s illegal, then please shut us all down as soon as possible,” Wu says. “But if it’s legal, then shouldn’t there be some policies in place to support us?”
The chaotic combination of low regulation and lots of cash has led to extraordinary behaviour, including the high-speed rail stunt and what Wu says is a common scheme – cloning tracking chips to send a secret second bird over the finish line early.
There are also methods that would probably be banned if a solid set of standards were established, such as the use of performance enhancing drugs, and trainers who separate their racing birds from its lifelong mate so it races home faster. Some trainers will even put a pigeon’s mate in a separate cage with another bird hoping the jealousy will fire up the racer’s wings.
“Running a pigeon club in Taiwan is honestly tough, because there’s so much cheating,” says Wu. “There were all kinds of tricks – I’ve heard a lot of them.”
Wu says he’s willing to work with welfare groups and the government to create “a healthier form of the sport”, brought out of the grey area, but the government has left them “stuck in limbo”.
The government claims pigeon racing is linked to too much crime. As well as the cheating and kidnapping, there are also alleged ties in some cases to criminal gangs, accusations of animal cruelty and reports of billions of Taiwanese dollars in potentially illegal side-betting that total far more than the official prize pools.
In other counties, Taiwanese police raid what they say are illegal betting rings operating out of local associations. Officials have been arrested or jailed and hundreds of millions of Taiwan dollars seized.
“Gambling offences have long been a key enforcement target,” Taiwan’s ministry of interior told the Guardian, while the ministry of agriculture claimed illegal gambling was the industry’s “main source of revenue”.
‘Very competitive’ sport: at the summer sea race check-in
Wu told the Guardian that his association does nothing illegal, and argues that the unofficial prize pools are not illegal. “What we do in pigeon racing is not gambling, it’s a competition prize. The government has never really given us a clear stance on it.”
Kidnappings and ransoms
The industry has tried to address the cheating.
In the late 1990s all Taiwanese pigeon races were moved offshore, packing tens of thousands of birds on to container ships to fly a route almost entirely over the open ocean. But the format has been condemned by animal rights groups, which claim that huge numbers of pigeons are lost at sea, in races that appear to go ahead no matter the weather. Authorities say loss rates in some races are as high as 98%.
The national pigeon racing body will register about 60% of birds returning home by season’s end
The rights groups allege birds are often mistreated, and cruelly discarded once past their prime. Some want racing banned outright. But He Tsung-hsun, secretary general of the Taiwan Animal Protection Monitoring Network, (TAPMN) acknowledges the “culture is deeply embedded in Taiwanese society” and instead urges authorities to start with a ban on sea races and to better investigate allegations of illegal activity.
Wu says of the mistreatment and theft allegations: “that kind of behaviour is terrible to us too. We want to fix that. I want to talk to these groups and say, ‘OK, if we go back to land-based races where fewer birds get lost or hurt, I’m all for it’.”
Huang Nai-shun at his pigeon coop in Yunlin. His love of the sport takes every spare dollar he has, he says
Pigeon racers say the loss figures misinterpret late finishers as dying or disappearing. At season’s end, Wu’s association will register about 60% of birds returning home. Handlers say improving animal welfare is a key argument for further regulation of the sport.
“If races can be kept fair and clean, with no cheating and no shady characters, we wouldn’t necessarily have to rely on sea races,” says Huang Nai-shun, a pigeon breeder and racer. Huang decries the impact that crime and a lack of regulation has had on the sport. He says he has had to pay many a ransom to kidnappers for his own pigeons, and is distressed by the lack of standards for how to treat or dispose of those no longer racing. “Wherever there’s a competition, there will always be people trying to game the system,” he says.
Inside his rooftop pigeon loft in Chiayi county, Huang tends his pigeons with affection. He says the racing season takes every spare dollar as well as months of early mornings and late nights for training flights.
“It’s tough,” he says. “It’s all down to what you love – people only do this if they truly enjoy it.”
Taiwanese pigeon-racing originated during Japanese colonial rule a century ago
The path to legitimacy
It’s the last weekend of the southern competition’s summer season and Wu is overseeing the pre-race check-in at a nearby warehouse. Even in the pouring rain there’s an air of excitement as a stream of mostly older men arrive carrying cages of racing pigeons for check-in.
Pigeon breeder Lin Yo-zhen, 29, is one of the few people under 40 entering the southern sea summer race
Race officials scan trackers and wave UV lights over wings for invisible markings. The birds are separated from their owners and strictly guarded, then loaded into a container to be sent offshore with dozens of others the next day.
The handlers who speak to the Guardian push back on the criticism of their sport, and the Guardian is not suggesting that any of them are involved in illegal activity. For them, it’s not about the prize money, which they say they rarely see themselves, it’s about the thrill of the race and the payoff for hard work.
“It feels like training your own Olympic athletes,” says 29-year-old Lin Yo-Chen, one of the few people under 40, registering his last three competing birds. He loves “everything” about the sport, he says, noting that the other 27 birds he raced this season are all safely back at home.
Octogenerian Chen Bi-chou has been racing pigeons for seven decades. He is feeling optimistic about his last remaining racer but says he loves the sport for the community, and the tactical thinking that he believes helps keep dementia at bay.
In two days, a livestream from the ship’s deck will show the birds blast out of their cages into the sea air and hopefully make a beeline for home.
“You’ve put so much care into training them, and when you release them far away – sometimes in rough weather – and they still find their way home, it’s moving,” says Mr Tu, a 61-year-old retired prison guard.
Chen Bi-chou, 81, has been breeding and racing pigeons for more than seven decades
Eventually bird No 81 wins the season, its owner taking home official winnings of about NTD$1.2m ($40,000), from a pool of about NTD$6m. But data published by the association online reveals they also won more NTD$1m in side bets, from a total pool of NTD$148m. In other counties people have been convicted over side bets, but nationally, authorities are not clear on whether it is illegal. There is no record of any raids or arrests in Pingtung – Wu’s county.
To legitimise the sport would require new legislation, the creation of a “competent authority”, strong industry self-regulation and an end to illegal gambling, the agriculture ministry says. However, there’s little sign of progress.
