When Elizabeth Cook entered her first pigeon race last year, her father hoped her birds would not finish too far behind his so she would not get disheartened.

Waiting anxiously at home, they saw two birds overhead and watched as one peeled off and dived — towards Elizabeth’s loft. “I shouted and screamed so much that I scared mine off and it wouldn’t come down for 25 minutes,” James Cook, 41, said. His bird came fourth when it should have been second. Elizabeth’s had won.