MECHELEN 2018 UK VICTORY!
MECHELEN, BELGIUM | AUGUST 25-26 | TEXT AND PHOTOS BY KARL DONVIL
I was wrong, contrary to last year it was again a single show, but next year will be a double version again. Notwithstanding the World Dog Show of Amsterdam just behind, there was a rather good entry of 1,456. The organizers were not disappointed but of course, they all paid for more. But remember that last year there were only 1,228 entries on the first show and 1,242 on the second. The committee has been flirting with bankruptcy not long ago and they crossed their fingers that this show would not mean the end. Within the committee, this always cre- ates high tension and at the top, there have been changes. But at the end of the show, I asked if there was good hope and it was confirmed. Indeed it would be a pity if this would be the last show in a long row, but there is good hope that next year the 40th (and 41st) edition can be celebrated. That will be on August 17 and 18, 2019. Let me hope they will have many dogs. Of course, a double show like last year means 2,470 entries that were paid for, a thousand more than this year and that makes a difference at the end of the show, but “in” the end all shows go down in numbers. And is it not necessary to pay extra judges, their hotel and transport, with what bring those thousand extra entries into the account of the club? You need more space, an extra cata- log, more stewards, more rings, more trophies, rosettes, printings, etc. And as this is a rather new development in the world of dog shows, we need to see how it will evolve. But if you read my previous show reports, I have no good hope if this will become the new norm. The Nekkerhalls have become more expensive since the city sold them to a private company that has several expo halls all over in Belgium. Profit is impor- tant for them and the committee decid- ed to rent less space and use the space of the main ring during the day for rings, and why not as there have never been demonstrations before and the main ring was just an empty spot. And even now there was plenty of space for the rings and moving around. The Nek- kerhals are very large and only less than half was occupied for the show and at
first sight, one had the impression that it was a small show, but that had every- thing to do with no separate main ring. Compared to previous years, except for last year, Mechelen always had between 1,400 and 1,600 entries, but at the time the halls belonged to the city it was probably no problem to use more space. So, in fact, this was a very normal Sint- Rombauts-dog-show. The catalog is arranged by Online- dogshows and contains everything we need, except for two things; one is there are no longer full addresses of the exhibitors published, which has probably to do with the new Privacy rule. But on the other hand, they surely mention the breeders amongst their members with full address which is f course a plausible gesture. The second thing is that they no longer publish sta- tistics about the nationalities present. It is only a push on a button to make a count in their program and a small space in the catalog, but it says a lot about the prestige and international- ity of the show. Hence I was forced to have a count myself, which is very time
consuming and less accurate. But to my surprise I found 20 different nationali- ties! Of course, some were only repre- sented by one or two exhibitors, but anyway! The Netherlands had 172 dogs entered, France 90 and Germany 66 and then came the United Kingdom with 18 and Denmark with 15 dogs. Among the more rare countries, I could find even two entries from Romania, one from Cyprus, one from Israel and two from as far as Argentina! The judges, on the other hand, were selected from nine different countries. Six of the 19 judges were from Belgium and of which four were judging on Sun- day only. It was somewhat strange to notice that 11 judges were officiating one day only, that is a lot compared to other shows. But notwithstanding that the dogs/judging-day rate was not bad with a score to 54. The best scoring judge on Saturday was Mr. John Bond from Ireland. Judging dogs from Group II, including 28 Bulldogs, he finished the day after having examined 138 dogs in his ring. Mrs. Amanda White was invited from the United Kingdom
“COMPARED TO PREVIOUS YEARS, EXCEPT FOR LAST YEAR, MECHELEN ALWAYS HAD BETWEEN 1400 AND 1600 ENTRIES, BUT AT THE TIME THE HALLS BELONGED TO THE CITY IT WAS PROBABLY NO PROBLEM TO USE MORE SPACE.”
146 • S how S ight M agazine , O ctober 2018
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