That was the message Orange pigeon trainer Richard Turnbull used to tell the Springboks - yes, those Springboks - back in the '90s.

Turnbull, who was the strength and conditioning coach for the side in 1993 and is now decorated in the South African athletics Hall of Fame due to coaching national and international athletes, has always loved pigeons.

He used to race the birds in South Africa before emigrating to Orange in 1997 - a move he decided to make after the Springboks' B side played a game at Wade Park - and despite a few years away from the sport returned in tandem with Ed Strudwick nearly two decades ago.

He will have birds in the air this weekend as the Mid Western Racing Pigeon Association's 2019 season takes to the skies, with pigeons taking flight - called a "liberation" - in Cobar early on Sunday morning.

The season will cover nearly 10 weeks of racing and while the competition isn't large - there are maybe a dozen across the Central West, mostly in Orange and Dubbo - it's fiercely competitive.

While Turnbull - also a former Emus coach - was considered a star overseas, to the point pigeon racing royalty Bill Lawry sought him out during the 1993 tour, he's had to take a step back since returning to the sport.

"After I moved ... I had a few years off and then developed an allergy to them. I stopped, but later approached Ed and said we could do them together," Turnbull said.

"It became too risky to handle them and help Ed out. He manages them, I transferred my loft across and help out where I can.

"We go together as a team, he uses even number rings and I have odd."

He's always applied the logic of sport science - which he did for a living with humans - to training birds, with huge success, and still helps supply the food and advice to Strudwick.

Not that Strudwick needs a huge amount of the latter - he's been racing pigeons since his early 20s, but said it wasn't easy to convey what he loved about the sport.

"It's a challenge, it's something that you... it's hard to explain. That feeling you get when they come home, you pour your heart and soul into it every day for their entire lives," he said.

"They're the athletes of the sky.

VIDEO: The pigeons take flight into the sky for a routine run ahead of Sunday's race ...

"It's like horse racing, except where horses have the green grass the birds have the blue sky."

He said partnerships like his and Turnbull's were becoming more and more common as costs rise for the sport.

The season kicks off with a race from Cobar this weekend, but it's one of the shorter distances for the season, with liberations as far west as Wilcannia, Broken Hill and finally Port Augusta, in a trek that will take most birds nearly 36 hours, depending on wind conditions.

Strudwick said much of the time measuring, with birds heading to different locations, was done through a computer to generate a score.

"We each keep clocks and we enter it all into a computer when they arrive back, they measure it and compare it," he said.

"We did one from Tottenham earlier this year which was 218 kilometres, which is about 1200 metres a minute."

Liberation for Sunday's race is expected at 8am.