How National Hunt trainer Martin Pipe’s first winner 45 years ago led to over 4,000 more

Both started from scratch. Both used a scientific approach to training. And both hate to be proved wrong.

More recently Pipe, who saddled his very first winner on May 9, 1975, has seen his records fall to Johnston.

In August 2018, Middleham-based Johnston saddled his 4,194th winner, usurping both Pipe and Richard Hannon senior.

And Pipe’s record of 243 winners during the 1999-2000 National season was smashed by Johnston who recorded 249 victories in 2019 when he took his own numerical domination to a new level of consistency.

Yet the 4,183 winners recorded by Pipe between May 1975, and his retirement in 2006, are all the more remarkable because they exceeded the number predicted by his father Dave, a Westcountry bookmaker, by 4,183.

“I intend to lay the horse to any punters who want to back it with me,” he said before Hit Parade’s success at the Pipe family’s local track Taunton. “Mark my words, Martin will never train a winner.”

Pipe junior left school and started working in some of his father’s 45 betting shops to further his education before the family acquired a pig farm from where they started to train some point-to-point horses.

“I didn’t have a clue when I started,” he once told The Sun’s legendary racing correspondent and confidante Claude Duval. “I used to read books to try and pick up knowledge.

“When I started, I definitely felt I was a complete outsider. I never worked in any other trainer’s yard for a single day.”

Pipe had shattered his ankle in a final flight fall at Taunton in May 1972 from a horse called Lorac (his wife Carol’s name spelt backwards).

When he won a solitary point-to-point race in May 1975, he retired on the spot. “I was a pretend jockey and I was determined not to become a pretend trainer,” he vowed.

The turning point came when Pipe was introduced to Len Lungo, then a Westcountry-based jockey, who told some home truths when he inspected the trainer’s three horses, including Hit Parade.

“I did not want to offend Martin, but neither did I intend to butter him up as that would have been a thorough waste of time,” said Lungo.

“All three horses were far too fat, their mangers had food in them long after feed time and their legs showed distinct signs of wear and tear.”

Pipe took up the story in his own autobiography. “With little time for me to play at trainers, a crash course in dieting and sweating was prescribed for Hit Parade, whom Len exercised for me in the late mornings.

“Two wool rugs under the saddle and endless cantering saw the weight dropping off the tubby gelding and within a fortnight he faced the acid test.

“The last chance selling hurdle at Taunton that season presented us with the ideal race to get me a winner, although the hard underfoot conditions that prevailed in May that year made the task that more difficult.”

Yet local knowledge also played its part. Knowing Hit Parade was a front-runner, and his race was first over hurdles on the card, Lungo and Pipe deployed a very cunning plan.

Aware that there would be very little give in the hurdles if Hit Parade clattered into them, Lungo walked the course and gently loosened from the rails the second section of each flight.

“It was obvious the hurdles would come off best if it came to an argument,” said Lungo who went on to become a trainer in his native Scotland before giving up to assist his Harrogate-born son-in-law James Tate.

“I simply loosened the second section from the rails in each of the eight flights we would be jumping. The selected race offered an ideal opening provided the changed eating habits, weight loss and extra work had improved Hit Parade.”

Backed down to 13-8 favourite, Hit Parade and Len Lungo made all to win by seven lengths. Meanwhile Martin Pipe was so grateful that he gave his entire prize money of £272 to the rider rather than the obligatory 10 per cent. “It was worth every penny,” said to the man who went on to saddle more National Hunt winners than any other trainer.

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