About NPRR

We are building a national record for British pigeon racing — one that respects the sport’s traditions while giving fanciers, clubs and Federations the modern tools they have long deserved.

Fanciers gathered around their timing clocks after a race, 1945

CONTEXT

Why we are building this

British pigeon racing has never lacked drama. What it has lacked is a single, public record. Results live on paper sheets, on clubhouse noticeboards, and across two dozen different spreadsheets. Pedigrees are written out by hand and stapled to brown envelopes.

When a fancier wants to know how a young bird’s grandsire raced, they have to ring up a man who has to find a folder. When a buyer wants to verify a seller’s claim, they have to take the seller’s word for it. When a Federation wants to publish a National result, it has to chase fifty club secretaries.

We think a sport with this much history deserves a working public record. So we are building one.

Our principles

Verified, not claimed

Every race result on NPRR is uploaded by the club that ran the race, using their own clock software. We do not retype, we do not edit, and we do not invent figures. The audit trail follows the ring number for the life of the bird.

Open to every club

NPRR is free for everyone — fanciers, clubs and Federations. A club with twenty members should not be shut out of a national stage, and we will never put one behind a paywall.

Built for mobile use in the loft

Most fanciers will check NPRR on a phone, with cold hands, in poor light. So we test every screen at 375 pixels first, before we ever look at it on a laptop.

Aligned with RPRA standards

We work with RPRA-approved clocks, RPRA ring numbers and RPRA distance calculations. We are not seeking to replace any union — we are building the public-facing record they have always needed.

Who we are

James Whitcombe

Founder & engineer

Built software for the BBC and the Premier League before turning to the sport his grandfather raced in Co. Durham.

Margaret Hollis

Pigeon-fancier liaison

Twenty-three years racing on the South Coast. Past secretary of three clubs. Knows what a working secretary actually needs.

Aled Pritchard

Federation liaison

Welsh Homing Pigeon Union committee member. Manages our conversations with national bodies and ring authorities.

Roadmap

May 2026
Pilot beta with first Federations
July 2026
Young Bird season launch
Sep 2026
Public marketplace opens
Dec 2026
National rankings live
2027
API integration with electronic clocks

Photography: Jaqian (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Spanishguitar101 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Sundaramoorthy K (CC BY 4.0) · Nuhu Abdullah (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Hery blur (CC BY-SA 4.0) · State Library of NSW (public domain) — all via Wikimedia Commons. Remaining photographs are the community’s own.