Stein Thorsen

Hello.
My name is Stein Thorsen, pigeon enthusiast since the age of ten. I live in Kleppestø, a suburb to Bergen, an island with ca. 30.000 inhabitants.
Here, we have built a a house on my grandfathers farm, with a lot of space to build a large loft and garage. I live with my posistive wife, Benny, and we have four children together, and now, four grandchildren. I am an electritian and work for Caverion as a leader.

Here follows a short description of my life with pigeons.

Being young in Bergen in the sixties and seventies was wonderful. Around a thousand teenagers were iinvolved in the sport and there were pigeon clubs in every corner of the city. At the most it was 11 clubs in the eighties and ninties. I had my grandfathers barn at my disposal, and as the sheep moved out, my pigeons moved in. In the end i had the whole of the first floor.

I also had room for NBF breeding that I managed for a few years. Here there were good pigeons from known Belgian breeding, among them Andre Vermote and Emil Deweerdt. The swedish LILIA brought them to Sccandinavia and the Norwegian Championship has been won about ten times with pigeons of their descent.

After some time I got pigoen from these and on the pedigree there is Oude Blauwe, Spurtje, Wringer, Spiritus og Lisbeth, and by examining the pedigrees I got interested in inbreeding. I have in later years used inbreeding with success.

My results around this time includes «Scandinavian Championship, twice Norwegian champion and two times winner of the Kings trophy. Others include good results on the long distance flights from Stockholm, and from Padburg, south of Denmark

From about1985 to 2005 the club on Askøy was one of the best clubs in Norway, with good national results. After a while our membership numbers declined because of a huge problem with birds of prey. This was a hard time for the pigeon sport in Norway. As a result of this, two of my close friends moved to Denmark to continue flying, but here with good results.

In the nineties I was a member of NBF, and I represented them on scandinavian meetings and the olympiad. Here I made new acquaintances from all over the world, and the pigeon world is larger and more significant than what we see from home.
Another chapter is the one loft races. Here I have partisipated on the Norwegian team in the FCI competition several times, in China, Portugal, South Africa, Mexico, Romania and in France in 2002. In France we came sixst in the final, with a brother to my “Stein Turbo”.

Stein Turbo is a young pigeon from Dion Esmanns DK gold pair, they were sold on aution in Bergen the winter of 96,  and I bought a youngster from that pair.
The father is from Emil Deweerdt predigree, with pigoens of Lisbeth and Spiritus in the pedigree. The mother is from Viggo Elofsson S and had Jannsen from Fredrikshoff in her pedigree.
This is the parents of my Stein Turbo and alot of the good pigeons, both for me and others. Stein Turbo was given as a young to PK Hansen in Fredrikstad, they flew him with amongst other a 1 and 4 place in the 860 km from Byske, and when the brother took 6. place in WC, they started breeding on him and his family. Stein Turbo came to me the summer of 2006, and stayed here ever since.
See own chapter on Stein Turbo.

In the 2000 there are huge problems with birds of prey here in Bergen, and some years we were not able to have longer flights than 50 km.
We started several new clubs and tried to cooperate about a new approach, this time from the north. The theory behind this was that the birds then would fly with tailwind and that the birds of prey would have less opportunity to catch the pigeons. This worked well, and since then races up to 200 km have been a success. See image of Kråkenes Fyr.

The optimism is back after successful flights, and new members are joining and alot of Norwegian pigeons are in One Loft Races.
We are also trying to light the spark by having social evenings, with short lectures, auctions and beer. We do this 2-3 times a year, with the venue at Nøsteboden as a highlight.

Since 2007 I have inbreed on Stein Turbo, with children, siblings ect. This has shown good results with others, amonst them my friend Atle Andersen who moved to Denmark. He received one sister of Stein Turbo, and two of that pairs children, nr 246 and 5555 flew in the long distance championship in 2015.
In 2012, Arne Lambach and I, swapped two pigeons, and the one I received from him, bred in 2017 the number 27 in the finale in Derby Great Algrave, and he has breed a 400 km winner amongst other good results.