“Bacoș Cup” 2025, won by the tandems Tănăsie + Cărăbaș and Moț + Iuliu

This year, the Breclav 1 middle-distance stage, organized by the Arad County pigeon fanciers’ branch, also served as the competition for the “Bacoș Cup.” This special event of the Arad branch was established in memory of Traian Bacoș, a former member of the organization, and carries a strong emotional significance.

The Breclav 1 race took place on September 28. The event was almost a provincial-level competition, bringing together 163 pigeon fanciers from Arad, Timiș, and Bihor counties, as well as one breeder from Maramureș. A total of 3,765 pigeons were entered, a number that significantly raised the level of competitiveness.

Arad fanciers “on top”

As soon as the weather conditions allowed, at 8:40 AM, the pigeons were released from the transport trucks. Regardless of location or county, all participants faced distances of over 400 km, with some breeders from Timiș even exceeding 500 km. The first pigeons began returning after more than five hours of flight, with several arrivals recorded shortly after 2:00 PM in Arad, Timiș, and Bihor. During this intense period of early arrivals, the stage winner—and thus the winner of the Bacoș Cup—was determined.

The winning pigeon belonged to the tandem “Tănăsie + Cărăbaș” from Lipova, Arad County—a team formed in 2022 by fanciers Ionel Tănăsie and Gabriel Cărăbaș. Their young bird arrived at 2:29:08 PM, having covered 467 km at an average speed of 1,338.69 m/min.

Beyond the remarkable performance, the winning pigeon is also at the heart of a very interesting story:

“Winning the Bacoș Cup was both a surprise and a bonus for us. I think it also reflects the good streak we’ve had lately. The surprise is even greater because the pigeon wasn’t bred by us. It showed up at our loft before the young bird season began—and never left. It actually belongs to Demian Pisău from Brad, Hunedoara. We contacted him, and he told us to keep it. When the young bird races started, we chipped it and raced it just like our own pigeons. It was one of the 11 young birds we sent to this race, and to our surprise, it was the first to arrive and the overall winner. We trained our pigeons daily around the loft; in the last two days before the race, we added Verselle Laga’s Energy mix to their feed, and in the water we used Tollyamin and Biotics,” explained Ionel Tănăsie.

The “Moț + Iuliu” tandem wins the fanciers category

In the overall breeders’ ranking, another tandem took the top spot—pigeon fanciers Bogdan Moț and Iuliu David, whose loft is located in the village of Bocsig. They entered the Breclav 1 race with a team of 10 pigeons, which performed excellently. Six managed to classify, with their first and third arrivals being team birds. They placed 15th and 37th overall, earning a total penalty coefficient of 13.81 points—enough to secure first place in the general breeders’ standings.

“I competed between 2007 and 2011, then moved to Germany, where I stayed for 15 years. When I returned to Romania, I resumed this passion together with David Iuliu. I brought several Koopman and Van Dyck pigeons from Germany. David also races pigeons, so our collaboration works very well. For the Breclav stage, we carefully selected these 10 young birds and prepared them as best we could, even taking them to two 50 km training tosses. The two team birds are from the Etienne Meirlaen line, bred from a pigeon I bought from Bogdan Sorin, a descendant of the famous Olympic Monar,” said Bogdan Moț.

Results in Timiș and Bihor

In the same race, 24 fanciers from Timiș entered 378 pigeons. With just six pigeons in the race, Claudiu Sârghi managed to take both first and second place in the county’s pigeon rankings, as well as first place among breeders (third overall), with a distance of 409 km.

A similar situation occurred in Bihor, where 83 breeders entered 2,071 pigeons. The winner in both the pigeon and breeder categories was Daniel-Andrei Neagoe. He flew a distance of 427 km, entering 40 young birds—14 of which successfully classified.