Horse Racing: Pipe's Professionalism Shook His Sport

National Hunt racing never quite worked out what to make of Martin Pipe. Now, it seems, it never will. His departure from the sport he dominated for nearly 20 years was even more abrupt than his emergence as a force in the 1980s, when the self-taught son of a bookie started to saddle winners at a rate that, by the traditional standards of Lambourn and Wantage, seemed almost obscene. It was no surprise, then, to find that even as he announced his retirement with a dramatic, live-on-tv flourish, his ability to polarise opinions within the sport was undiminished.

Within minutes of Pipe's disclosure on Saturday morning that his licence would immediately pass to David, his son, the internet's racing-related message boards were alive with the news. And what was intriguing was the number of ordinary racing fans who, even as the career of the most successful trainer in National Hunt history reached a sudden conclusion, claimed to be glad to see the back of him.

The naysayers were not in a majority, or anything like it, but they were a sign that a significant part of the sport could never accept - or, perhaps, forgive - the overwhelming success that Pipe enjoyed. When he took out his first licence in 1977, National Hunt racing was a country sport. By the time he relinquished it, 29 years later, it was a business similar to its counterpart on the Flat. That transformation was almost wholly down to Pipe, the outsider from the west country, and his radical notion that if you want to win a horse race, it helps if your horse is fit.

Go to an ordinary National Hunt meeting now, and you would never believe that barely 20 years ago, entire parade rings would be full of horses carrying "condition" - the polite term for flab - which were about to have one of the two or three gentle outings required to "put them right". Everyone - owners, trainers, jockeys - seemed to be involved in jumps racing for the fun, and love, of it. Winning was something of a side issue.

When Pipe started to turn up with tough, leathery, hard-fit horses, it was a massacre. For his opponents, it was as obvious as the rib-cages on Pipe's runners that it was time to adapt or die, and there were plenty who preferred oblivion. That, perhaps, explains the resentment.

For many punters, though, it was a time when the game seemed easy. The prices soon shortened, but they were backing winners as never before. There was never a moment's doubt about many of them, either, as Peter Scudamore generally had a 15-length lead by the second flight which he preserved, or increased, all the way to the post. Some complained that it was boring, but when was counting your winnings ever dull?

Now, almost everyone has a steep uphill gallop to get their horses fit, and Pipe's legacy to the backers is that the adequate physical condition of the great majority of horses, even in humdrum races, can now be taken on trust.

If it were all that simple, though, Pipe would not have been champion trainer in 15 of the last 18 years. Only David Nicholson and, as of Saturday, Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs, have finished ahead of him in prize-money won since 1988, because - rather like one of his horses - when the pack started to close, Pipe always managed to pull out a little more.

The on-site veterinary lab at his Nicholashayne yard, built to analyse blood samples as swiftly as possible and monitor the wellbeing of the string, was a first for a jumping yard, and remains almost unique. Race conditions, meanwhile, were relentlessly scrutinised by a racing brain as tight and sharp as piano-wire to find anything that might offer an edge.

The French bloodstock industry, for instance, owes Pipe a considerable debt, as he was the first trainer to realise that four- and five-year-old chasers enjoyed a significant pull in the weights for novice chasers. With David Johnson's backing, Pipe started to import young, early- maturing stock from France, including Champleve, the 1998 Arkle winner. A five-year-old, Champleve was only a year younger than Hill Society, who was a nostril away in second place, but had a crucial 8lb allowance in his favour.

That result summed up a man whose mind never stopped looking for any advantage. Every minute detail of the training process was considered, recorded, analysed and, where necessary, acted upon.

The one skill that Pipe never mastered was communication, and attemping to glean information from him either before or after a race was often a painful process for all concerned. His instinctive reticence may also have added to the suspicions in his early days that Pipe was a man with something to hide. One newspaper, according to a persistent rumour, even sent a reporter to work as a stable lass at Pipe's yard in the early 1990s, with orders to find out "what he's giving his horses".

The story goes that the reporter spent several weeks at Pond House, opening cupboards and drawers, rifling through rubbish bins, and trying to tease information from other members of staff about what might be going on behind closed doors. In the end, though, she was forced to report back to her editor that all she had found was a breathtakingly efficient racing stable full of fit, gleaming horses, with a driven and tireless trainer at the helm.

Pipe never managed to win a Gold Cup, or to achieve his long-held ambition to go through an entire card, though he came close to both. But if his racing record alone marks him out as one of the great National Hunt trainers, then his achievement in changing the fundamental nature of the sport means that he must surely be remembered as the greatest of all.

The son also rises

On the face of it, there could not be a better start to any training career than to take over from a man who has re-written the record books. The bookmakers, though, cannot agree whether David Pipe is a 5-2 chance (Coral) or a 10-1 outsider (Stan James) to win the National Hunt trainers' championship at the first attempt, reflecting the fact that inheriting a successful yard from a parent is no guarantee of success.

Nick Gifford, who took over from his father Josh, has made a solid start to his career, but Mark Pitman, who followed his mother Jenny into the family business, recently gave up his licence.

On the Flat, Andrew Balding is a Classic winner already after taking over from his father Ian, but Alan Berry has struggled to match the profilic record of his father, Jack.

"It's nerve-wracking but I'm really looking forward to it," Pipe said yesterday. "Dad felt that the time is right to pass over to myself and he is usually a good judge. Nothing's really going to change at Pond House, he's still going to be here every day and he'll be passing on his advice."