Martin Pipe

Martin Charles Pipe (born 29 May 1945), is an English former racehorse trainer credited with professionalising the British racehorse training industry, and as of 2021 the most successful trainer in British jump racing.

The son of a West Country bookmaker, Pipe was an amateur jockey before turning his attention to training in 1974 at Nicholashayne, Somerset, near Wellington, England, at Pond House stables.

Pipe is broadly credited with professionalising National Hunt racing.

He made multiple simple but effective changes to what had been then the traditional methods of training racehorses, specifically those in jump racing.

His training innovations included using interval training, using daily blood tests to assess fitness, and keeping horses lean during the racing season, all intended to ensure his horses were at peak fitness for races.

His methods came into broad use during the period he was training.

Pipe applied for and received a licence to train in 1974 and began training at his father's farm, Pond House stables, which Dave Pipe had converted from a dilapidated former pig farm to establish racing stables.

Pond House is located in the hamlet of Nicholashayne in Somerset, near Wellington and the Devon border.

He hired Chester Barnes, a former table tennis champion, as his assistant.

Pipe knew nothing about training racehorses, and his initial efforts were conspicuously unsuccessful.

Pipe's first winner was with Hit Parade in a selling hurdle at Taunton in May 1975, jockeyed by Len Lungo.

Before the race, Pipe's bookmaker father announced “I intend to lay the horse to any punters who want to back it with me.

Mark my words, Martin will never train a winner.” After Hit Parade won, Pipe's father told him "You never trained that horse. [Previous trainer] Gay Kindersley gets that winner."

Fourteen seasons later Pipe was crowned champion trainer for the first time.

The first clue to the upward trajectory that his career would subsequently take came with the 66/1 victory of Baron Blakeney over red-hot favourite Broadsword in the 1981 Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Teaching himself the job with no preconceived notions or received wisdom, Pipe changed his training methods, which started out following what was typical at the time, and when he started winning races others became suspicious of his methods.

Pipe's partnership with jockey Scudamore from 1986 through 1993 (when Scudamore retired) was particularly successful; the racing post wrote:"Many trainers have copied the methods of Martin Pipe in recent decades and several jockeys have superseded the numerical achievements of Peter Scudamore, but none can claim to have cut such a swathe through racing’s centuries-old idyll as the pair who arrived like an act of God in the closing years of the 1980s."

Pipe also employed assistants who went on to become notable trainers themselves, including Tom Dascombe and Venetia Williams.

Pipe was also associated with multiple notable racehorse owners, including David Johnson, Paul Green, Freddie Starr, Terry Neill, Brian Kilpatrick, Darren Mercer, John Brown, and Stanley Clarke.

ITV did an edition of The Cook Report in 1991 that according to the Racing Post "basically accused Pipe of every dodgy practice short of witchcraft" and according to The Guardian in 2006 was "a very spiteful programme without foundation".

Pipe was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to horse racing.

In 2002, suspicions raised again by his successes, the Jockey Club made a "dramatic dawn raid" on Pond House and collected blood samples, all of which tested negative.

He retired in 2006.

His son, David Pipe, took over as trainer with Pipe assisting.

As of 2021 he was the most successful trainer in the history of British jump racing.

Pipe was born to Dave and Betty Pipe; his father was a bookmaker who owned or managed 45 betting shops.

He attended Queen's College in Taunton.

He left school with three O-levels.

After he left school Pipe worked in his father's shops, managing some of them, and also worked as an amateur jockey in point-to-point races.

He wanted to become a professional jockey, but didn't have great success and turned to training.

He first sat on a horse at the age of seventeen and rode only one winner.

His father had built a stables for some point-to-pointers he owned, and after an injury following his single amateur win, Pipe decided he would train his father's point-to-pointers.

Prior to this he had never considered training as a career and knew nothing about training racehorses.

The Independent, writing at the time of Pipe's retirement in 2006, called the various accusations and investigations a "shameful persecution".

Pipe went on to be Champion Trainer 15 times with successive stable jockeys Lungo, Peter Scudamore, Richard Dunwoody, David Bridgwater and Tony McCoy.

He also employed as jockeys Gordon Elliott, who later went on to become a notable trainer, and Scudamore's son, Tom Scudamore.

Peter Scudamore, McCoy and Dunwoody all won Champion Jockey while working with Pipe.

Pipe and Dunwoody had a difficult relationship.

The Times, writing in 2020, called it a "savaging" and said of the insinuations of ethical violations and cruelty, "The truth, though, was that Pipe was just getting his horses fitter than anyone else, knew precisely when they were healthy enough to do themselves justice, and ran them in the right races."

Pipe was so upset he had thoughts of suicide; he recalls being brought out of his despondency by the public offer a few days later from Percy Brown, a Jockey Club steward, to send Pipe a horse for training.