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OK, I’ll admit it: there’s perhaps been one trainer in my lifetime who I may regard as approaching ‘genius’ status but this was because he wasn’t just an oustanding trainer like the previously-debated Henry Cecil, he actually changed the very fundamentals of his sport.
When the failed-jockey and bookies’ son Martin Pipe started training some very modest racehorses in 1974, he arrived into a sport whose ethics and practices were basically Dickensian. By the time he retired in 2006, and 4183 winners later, his state-of-the-art methods were standard throughout the game.
1. He introduced regular blood tests and an in-house laboratory to ascertain the exact fitness of horse.
2. An understanding of ‘fractions’ as they are called today and employing jockeys (particularly Scudamore and McCoy) who could apply those accurately using aggressive tactics, especially off the front.
3. He understood form. Pipe employed form analysts. He made sure his horses were in the right races as often as possible. He never overrated his horses.
4. He recognised weaknesses in the calendar, hoovering up early-season non-competitive races with an ultra-fit if not particularly talented team.
5. He introduced HRI scanning to check for internal problems and understand the constitution of his horses.
6. He built his own equine swimming pool to aid recovery and offer non-impact resistance training.
7. He created the concept of syndicating horses for the ordinary man. Whilst syndicates had been around forever, only Pipe got the right sort of cheap purchase to win modest races for his working-man syndicates. His effect on popularising group ownership shouldn’t be underestimated.
8. Whilst he understood totally the limits of each of his horses, he got the maximum out of them and ran them more often than other trainers.Pipe’s operation was disruptive technology at it’s finest. The itunes to other trainers’ vinyl. Inevitably, it led to much jealousy from the established Lambourn set, although Mr Pipe must now smile to himself when he sees all of today’s trainers using the exact methods he initiated.
The epitome of a Martin Pipe horse for me was Make A Stand, who started the 96/7 season winning a handicap hurdle off 114 and ended it by running his rivals into the ground in the Champion Hurdle. He ran 16 times between May 1996 and April 1997.
This is brilliant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oEABR-Vi64
Mike
Nice post Mike. A pioneer and innovator who changed the landscape of National Hunt racing. I remember the early days when you would see one of his shoot 20 lengths clear after 2 hurdles and be thinking "that’ll finish last" only to see it win by 30 lengths! Good call.
"this perfect mix of poetry and destruction, this glory of rhythm, power and majesty: the undisputed champion of the world!!!"
Not sure if he would be able to mop up the same sort of races anymore as the August/September South West circuit is a thing of the past but he would have probably cleaned up all the poor summer jumping races instead.
Nice write-up Mike. My personal choice as the horse that epitomised his methods is the filly Hopscotch.
Bred by the Queen and raced in her colours as a 2-y-old, Pipe bought her for 13,500 gns and despite the fact that she was about the size of a well fed mosquito, prepared her for a career as a juvenile hurdler.
In the space of eight months, she ran fifteen times and won eleven of them. Her biggest win came in the Finale Hurdle at Chepstow, when she beat the subsequent Sun Alliance Hurdle winner Crystal Spirit by 20 lengths, with the triumph Hurdle winner Oh So Risky further back.
She also beat the top class Muse in the Triumph Trial in January, but the actual race proved a step too far and she was a well beaten favourite in March. She was eventually sold to race in the USA.
One item I’d add to your list of the things he changed – his demonstration that you could win big races (Paddy Power, Hennessey) without having a prep race.
Strands of Gold
winning the Hennessey would be my contribution as to why Martin Pipe is a Genius.
Cats eyes
was a personal fav and a typical example of Pipes training regime.
I agree with all the above, but I did read once that his training regime didn’t suit a lot of horses, which were then subsequently discarded, much to the annoyance of the people who owned them.
Unquestionably the greatest trainer of the post-war era, simply because his methods changed the entire sport. As the opening post says, what Pipe was doing twenty years ago has now become the standard.
Pipe’s autobiography is a cracking read, too.
However the down side was the turnover of horses that did not hack the regime …it was a ruthless yearly clean out
Genius yes undoubted
good for racing …no question …modern day trainers are still trying to keep up
Good for horses and owners …maybe not , that’s where I have an issue
IMO
Yes!
One of the horses who typified Pipe was
Northern Starlight
, bought from Nicholls out of a selling hurdle at Taunton in 1995, he won 2 from 4 before injury kept him out for 14 months.
He returned to action with a change of tactics, making all to win a Wincanton Handicap Hurdle off 103 unchallenged by 9 lengths. 5 more wins followed that season (punctuated by a last flight fall in the Swinton). He finished the campaign on a 26lbs higher mark.
The following season his attentions were turned to Steeplechasing, and on debut it seemed to me that his size would be his undoing, finishing second having found the open ditches in particular a challenge.
No doubt Pipe had him back over the line of 5 open ditches before running up a three race sequence that ended with a Grade 2 success in the Rising Stars Novices’ Chase (then run at Chepstow). Defeat at Newbury was followed by a defeat of Escartefigue by slightly further than Florida Pearl would beat the Nicholson charge the following March.
Two more races as a Novice when runner up and an early end to the campaign were followed by a remarkable weight carrying performance in the First National Bank Chase at Ascot when he tried to give a stone to Red Marauder, but ended up beaten 20 lengths.
It seemed his progress had finally been stemmed, however Pipe’s genius came into its own when pitching his little warrior into the Grade 3 Tripleprint Gold Cup. Running off a feather weight 10st 1lb he must have thought he was running loose, and duly obliged, making all and gallantly holding on from Simply Dashing who, a month earlier, had finished runner up to Cyfor Malta in the Mackeson Gold Cup.
Nine straight defeats and a drop from 141 to 128 indicated the handicapper had his measure but there was one more surprise to come. Following a return to form at Ascot on April Fool’s Day 2000, less than a week later the diminutive bay gelding heroically tamed the Grand National fences in the John Hughes Trophy. David Pipe summed it up perfectly on the day: "There wouldn´t be a smaller horse in our yard, but he is all guts. He has come a long way from winning a seller at Taunton."
When I left Dounreay in 1986 I spent several months "semi-professional" at the game and found a very profitable niche backing Martin Pipe trained horses who had been off the track for between 1 and 2 years.
My late Father told me back then that John Jenkins was one of the few trainers who could put a horse out well tuned up on it’s first run for some time but I noticed that "The Boy Pipe" was rather good at it as well and the market was normally against the notion back in the days I was following that type of Pipe runner.
A horse of no real consequence from that time, and one that forum readers probably won’t recall, was a cuddy called Kescast, who was lining up after a two year absence in a hurdle race that wouldn’t take a lot of winning. I decided to wade in heavy at 8/1 whilst the boys around me in the shop assured me the horse would "blow up" after such a long time off.
In a bizarrely commentated race, Kescast set off in front and was hardly, if ever, mentioned again once he’d carved out a decent lead. Most of the talk was about the battle going on in the "Peleton" and it wasn’t until they popped over the last that the commentator declared that some horse had secured second spot but "He’s no danger to Kescast, who is a distance clear"
A very satisfying moment and Martin Pipe was my mainstay over the sticks in an era where his horses always seemed to be very aggressively ridden, a tactic that seemed to lessen with time and in higher quality races.
Make A Stand was a horse that, for me, was a hark back to ten years earlier and a bolder statement of intent. As already mentioned he climbed from very modest beginnings and he was the one that got away from me in The Champion Hurdle because I deserted him believing he couldn’t make all in such a high grade race.
With success comes imitation (said to be the sincerest form of flattery) and others are quick to delve into the methods of their rivals. Bookmakers also cotton on pretty quick and any value normally disappears.
With a business run with the efficiency of the Martin Pipe stable there is inevitably ruthlessness in the equation somewhere and the though-put of horses and the numbers of horses who didn’t return to the stable the following season, due to being pushed too hard and sustaining injuries, or simply not being deemed good enough, was investigated by Roger Cook, in his TV show The Cook Report twenty odd years ago.
The Cook report compared Pipe’s attrition rate with Jenny Pitman’s yard (perhaps others as well) and concluded that the figures for injuries amounted to cruelty. The program sticks in my mind for another reason, which was one of the interviewees, whom we were told had been kicked in the face by a horse recently. Well that horse should have been a darts player, because he left a perfect horseshoe imprint on the guy’s face that ended smack on his jaw-line, a thing of beauty to behold.
Reaction to the documentary in the racing fraternity was summed up in The Racing Post. I can’t recall the trainer’s name but I certainly recall his comment when asked about The Cook Report.
"It was a load of balls"
For me Pipe was certainly a game changer and one of the top trainers ever. I won’t sweat the "cruelty" allegations as much as some will. It’s a business and it is what it is with animal welfare always bubbling near the surface.
Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.
Interesting comments made by Doumen following the death of Hors La Loi III.
He said on the horse’s return to France – after Pipe had won the Supreme & Glenlivet with him – that he was never the same horse and his health was poor.
and Mike, it’s fitting that you should list Make A Stand as the horse that epitomizes the trainer as Make A Stand had had 15 runs that season following that glorious day in March.
He then had a 16th a month later at Aintree when he was a well beaten 3rd of 5 finishers.
He subsequently couldn’t run for another 3 years before being tailed off in Istabraq’s third victorious year.
Lee
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