Feathered fortunes: inside Asia’s richest pigeon race
In eastern Thailand, 5,000 pigeons brave predators and exhaustion in a gruelling sprint for a US$2 million purse
Somewhere on the cavernous loft floor, cooing softly from inside a stack of crates, a feathered fortune waits for its moment to shine.
For now, those hopes are packed tightly, wing to wing, into crates: more than 5,000 perfectly conditioned racers waiting to be scanned, logged and stamped under the watchful eyes of adjudicators to eliminate any chance of mid-air mischief.
The birds murmur and beat their wings as expert Thai handlers lift them from their cages, cradle them through the inspection and ease them into crates bound for the race start in Mukdahan, 540km (336 miles) away on the border with Laos.
From there, instinct takes over. Guided by an extraordinary homing ability – a biological GPS supported by scent and memory – the pigeons navigate their way back to the finish line of the Pattaya International Pigeon Race, the unlikely Asian heart of a global multimillion-dollar pastime.
The man behind this festival of feathered flight is Dhanin Chearavanont, one of Thailand’s wealthiest tycoons and a lifelong pigeon fancier.