Tony & Sandro Bonett: by Michael Saliba

Sandro Bonett is a 32 year old fancier but already has a lot of experience. He is one of the best and most consistent fanciers over the   island. This can be confirmed with the results obtained during the past years. But one may ask, how could this be, at such a young age? Let me explain Sandro's father, Tony is also a pigeon fancier. Infect this loft existed since 1976. Tony was a great fancier, and he specialized in long distance. He won the title of Long Distance Champion of his club 8 times and was General Champion of his club 7 times. But at the beginning of the 1990's Sandro took over and decided that he wanted to win from the shortest to the longest race if possible. And he started to lay the foundation for a family of pigeons that are all-round champions.

But let me explain how we race pigeons in Malta. Here in Malta we have 23 clubs and they are all affiliated to the national federation. The federation organizes all the races, 20 short distance and 7 middle to long distance races and each fancier (around 1000 fanciers in Malta) can send up to 10 birds in each race. This to give an equal chance to everybody. The one who obtain most points from all the races is the general (overall) champion.

Malta is a very small island in the Mediterranean Sea. The longest toss a fancier can give is 15 miles. Then the nearest island is Sicily some 60 Miles away. It is very difficult for a fancier to toss his birds from Sicily because birds would have to be shipped and this would make it very expensive. Races are being held from Sicily and from the southern part of Italy. This means that our pigeons would have to race over 60miles of sea from their very first race! This makes it very difficult for the pigeons. Also in long distance races, the pigeons would have to face a mountainous region at the first part of the race and then at the end the 60 miles stretch of sea, in hot temperatures ranging from 25 degrees C to 40degrees C. As if this was not enough, the pigeons have to stay 2 nights in the basket because the only way to arrive for the race points is by ship. But all this dose not hinder pigeon fanciers from practicing their beloved sports.

Infect, the first thing Sandro done, when taking over from his father, apart from listening from his father's good advise, he went to visit the most famous lofts in Belgium and The Nederland's. He went so far as to stay for some weeks as a helper with the world famous champion Jos Thone' from As (Belgium) and also with the long distance specialist Albert Willems from Eisden (Belgium). This helped Sandro a lot to achieve his dream, that to create a family of super champions.

He bought pigeons from many champions from the continent, like Jos Thone', Albert Willems and Jef Vanwinkel just to name a few.

Sandro achieved his goal and created a great team. In Malta Sandro is famous for his grizzles. They are winners of numerous races. To prove this Sandro has won 5 times the title of short distance champion, 5 times the title of Long Distance Champion and 5 times the title of General Champion. This shows that this partnership has a record in Maltese sports but has also a great future.