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Of Granger · South African Million Dollar Pigeon Race winner, January 2016
The tie, exactly: resident — the international pigeon press's own dateline for him is "Mike Ganus from US Granger," and its profile states the two halves of the tie in one sentence: he "was born in South Bend Indiana about 10 miles from Granger where he lives now." His loft, the Ganus Family Loft, is a Granger operation.
The course: Ganus has been in the racing-pigeon sport for more than forty years, and built the Ganus Family Loft into what the sport's international press calls the leading breeding loft for one-loft racing in the world — a superlative printed as the press's, not this section's. The documented summit came in January 2016, when his bird "Laura is a Big Winner Today" (GFL 267-2015) won the final of the 20th South African Million Dollar Pigeon Race — the sport's richest one-loft event — over a roughly 541-kilometre course into a head wind, by a fifteen-minute lead the race's coverage calls unprecedented. His loft's documented final-race wins since include the Victoria Falls World Challenge (2018) and the Pattaya International (2023). A suburb's fame band is entitled to one entry whose glory is real, documented, and entirely unexpected, and this is Granger's: the fastest pigeons in the world's hardest race were bred on this ground.
Sources:
- PIPA (Pigeon Paradise), "Mike Ganus (Granger, USA) is dreaming about a new victory on African soil" — the birth and residence sentence, the 2016 SAMDPR final and the winning bird.
- PIPA, "Mike Ganus Shines with Outstanding Performances in AFRIKAPRO 2025" and the Ganus Family Loft record card — the forty years in the sport, the Victoria Falls 2018 and Pattaya 2023 finals.