Let this ‘Ameyke’ together with the ‘Zitterke’ Delodder… be the parents of the ‘unbeatable’ stock bear of the colony Gaby Vandenabeele… the world famous ‘Kleinen’ B81-3238253. The ‘Ameyke’, when coupled with the old ‘Angoulême’ in the lofts of Van Parijs, were more or less the ‘golden stock couple’ with which Gilbert dominated the grand middle distance and long distance happenings with the youngsters in West-Flanders up until 1983… When he became carer of the Norman-lofts in 1984… this wonder couple also moved to the lofts of Norbert & Filip Norman, after they had bought the couple for a ‘record amount’ in the total auction of Gilbert Van Parijs… where, amongst other things, they formed the basis for the winning of the 1° National Argenton youngsters in 1989 in ‘Mas Palomas’ in Knokke! It was Gilbert Van Parijs who helped Gaby out by lending him his ‘golden breeding mother‘… the wondrous ‘Ameyke’ 419/77… to couple with this ‘Zitterke’. When Gaby borrowed the ‘Zitterke’ from Jozef Delodder from Zulte in the Spring of 1981,he didn’t readily have a suitable breeding hen to couple with this sublime cock.

It was also Gilbert who stood with him at the cradle of the ‘supremacy’ with which Gaby has conquered the world over the last quarter of a century. Soon pigeons came from Gilbert Van Parijs from the adjacent borough Aarsele, with whom Gaby was good friends. In 1976, further along from the family home in the Wontergemstraat … Gaby started racing under his own name… in the first instance with pigeons from father Gentiel which were a mixture of Desmet-Matthijs x Pol Bostijn. Because he worked shifts in the factory, Gaby and his older brother Daniel helped to take care of the pigeons. Indeed, Father Gentiel was a topper in the middle distance. Gaby caught the pigeon bug from the family home when he was very young. Was not necessary… because the performance pressure that the Vandenabeele pigeons applied to their opponents was so superior, so dominant… that within the shortest space of time every self-respecting pigeon reporter was visiting Gaby to write about the heroic deeds of his pigeons, to get to know or discover the man and the method hiding behind this overwhelming performance curve!

Top successes have never known any secrets for the Vandenabeele family… although these were usually celebrated in intimate circles… because the number of times that Gaby himself rang or wrote to the pigeon media to tell of his exploits or make them public knowledge, is more or less non-existent. We first came into contact with the ‘lion of Dentergem’ in 1984… the ‘coming man’ at the time… the man that was racing towards national top, first in the ‘grand middle distance’… later also in the long distance.

Pigeon pedigree maker