Dutch talents with a unique strain of Meulemans-Koopman
birds
Sanders brothers, Millingen ad Rijn (The Netherlands)
The duo of Ronnie and Carlo Sanders are on of the talents in Dutch
pigeon sport at the moment. The two very enthusiastic men turn their eggs into
cracks like it cost them no problems at all. Based on their fine colony of Meulemans-Sanders top birds together with the new
reinforcements of the Koopman birds, they became the
men to beat for the coming era . . . it is still the question who will be able
to stop them.
Ronny and Carlo came in touch with pigeon sport by their dad, H.
Sanders. He used to home some birds, but circumstances forced him to get rid of
them. In 1989 Ronnie and his dad came to talk about pigeons and Ronnie told he
was planning on starting over again with the noble hobby. Dad became interested
once again and the two of them decided to co-operate and race in the
partnership H. Sanders & Son in Nijmegen. We decided to start the
right way and we would not look for a penny to get what we want!
Meulemans-Sanders
And starting the right way meant for the Sanders family to go to the
famous Bennie Ebbers from Diepenheim,
the loft with maybe the most and most pure Meulemans
birds in The Netherlands. From all his top breeders youngsters moved to Nijmegen, like from a/o 'De Rode Topkweker',
'Zoon Jaarling', 'Zoon Wittekrop',
'Zoon Kadet', 'Dochter
Benjamin', etc. These birds were kept pure and also crossed to birds of Frits Boersma from Wolvega (strain Meulemans x Janssen Arendonk).
With these racial birds the results were bound to come. In 1997 Frits Boersma got some birds back from the Sanders breeders and
he became very successful with them. After a short while the Sanders brothers
started to make top results. These huge series of fine performances also
started to go beyond the club, the fanciers in the Nijmegen
Federation (600 members), amalgamation (1,100 members) and later on in combine
(1,425 members) and the new amalgamation GOU (4,500 members) knew the name of
Sanders was one to take into consideration. The championships and acebird titles were the automatic result of their policy.
Every year the results got better, until in 1998 their houses needed to
be renovated and most lofts had to go. The breeders all moved to Ronnie and Carlo's
sister in Weurt, and the number of racers was cut
into half, they had no other choice than to race from two very small
lofts. And the next setback came as their mom and dad started getting
problems with their health and the partnership of H. Sanders and Son had to be
ended.
But Carlo, living in Millingen ad Rijn, was
also infected with the pigeon bacteria in the meanwhile. From 1997 on he had
started racing birds from his home ground, together with his wife Monique.
Their results were getting much better and the Meulemans-Sanders
strain really listed fine performances here too! In the summer of 2000 Ronnie
and Carlo decided they were best off racing together in a partnership. And so
they did they started with their new challenge in pigeon racing.
Racing from Millingen ad Rijn
In the meanwhile Ronnie had moved to Millingen ad Rijn too and once settled their, all breeders that were
still housed in Weurt moved to Millingen too. In 2001 the results were outstanding again,
and 2 x 1st was won in Federation from Chantilly against 2,028 birds with
'Jack' and from Bourges
against 1,146 birds with 'Kimberley'
(12 minutes lead in Wijchen long distance specialists
club). In 2002 the success continued, in Federation (550 members) they became
a/o 1. nominated young bird champion, best youngbird
in Federation, 3. nominated overall speed champion, 3. not nominated young bird
champion, etc. In amalgamation 4,500 members they also became 2. nominated
young bird champion.
In 2003 Carlo and Ronnie won 1. from Orleans against 3,536 birds with 'Jean'. Over the last years some Koopman birds through Wittendorp
- Ede
succeeded very well for Sanders, and therefor they also went to purchase five
direct youngsters of the International superstar Gerard Koopman
in winter 2002. They were bred from 'Sire Olympic Vita', 'Zebran',
'105, sister Noble Blue', 'Son Kleine Dirk', 'Gandor', 'Sister Lioba', etc. As
both men visited Koopman for the second time, they
decided to buy twenty youngsters of Koopman every
year for the years 2003. This to even improve their results some
more.
It is already said that the Sanders results were
already magnificent. Some of their best birds of the last decade fully prove
that. Like a/o 'Wilhelmus', winner of 1. - 12,063 b.
and 1. - 5,406 b. Another great crack was 'The Blue Star', that won 1. - 13,135
b. / 1. - 11,009 b. / 1. - 5,241 b. / 1. - 5,227 b. / etc. 'Jack' (1. - 2,028
b. and 1. - 549 b.) and 'Jean' (1. - 3,536 b. and 1. - 1,974 b.) were such top
first prize winners too, and also 'Ponyduif' managed
to make name for herself, she won a/o 1. - 5,054 b. and 1. - 4,447 b. A fine
loft of top performers therefor.
On the Internet
Next to being active fanciers, the Sanders family is
also very active on the Internet. They try to expand the world of pigeon racing
on the the world wide web, and looking at the numbers
of visitors their sites get every day, this is really working out just fine! On
the site www.duivensite.com they offer all information on pigeonsport,
on www.pigeonhall.com the best birds are offered on an online auction,
www.meulemans-sanders.nl is their own website, www.koopman-pigeons.nl is the
site that presents the best Koopman birds and the
loft reports on the best International fanciers can be seen on
www.duivenreportages.com.
Carlo and Ronnie Sanders, they are
all-round men in pigeon sport. With top birds they got to belong to the top of
Dutch oneday racing and their Internet occupations
spread pigeon sport all over the world . . . many times these sympathetic men
will appear in the spotlights again!
