You need navigation so birds can fly on their own and return to their loft and endurance so that the birds can withstand long travels. Add up the 'care' ingredient and you have the perfect recipe for racing pigeon champs. You will also need to incorporate care and understanding because these birds are living creatures as well. You may have the fastest pigeon in a race, but it won't really matter if it doesn't fly in a straight line towards its goal. The more intelligent pigeons can orient themselves really well to any given location and have an innate feel of its coordinates. These types of pigeons can be found by looking for bloodlines that can fly at very long distances. Dry the area every time there are spills and moisture. If there is a noticeable amount of food left, cut down on the amount that you give the bird. Make certain that the bird's cage or loft is kept clean. Don't allow any sort of lead items inside. Be careful with the use of cages manufactured from foreign countries as they tend to have high lead content. You can use either of these three depending on the match you think will produce quality stock. The quality of the breeding bird can be assessed by the racing performance of its offspring. To increase the probability of producing championship caliber chicks, more than one test pairing should be administered. So there goes an additional expense on your part, and who knows, there might be more to come. Don't think that not having a large loft is a disadvantage. Having a small, yet well-built loft is actually more beneficial to you and to the other people surrounding your backyard. What you can do is to perhaps build three, separate small lofts: one for breeding, another one for racing, and lastly, for fancy birds. There's the "trap and landing board" for race pigeons, a "flypen" for those that are limited to fly freely, a "nestbox" for each pigeon especially that they are territorial animals, and numerous "perches". Every pigeon starts to live in a nest then must be transferred to a bigger loft after around 4 weeks.