Champion National Hunt Trainer
VC Bet have issued their prices for the National
Hunt Champion Trainer title which is based on prize money and ends in
April 2006. VC Bet’s Dominique
Hamblin commented “We could not split the chief protagonists this season
and make both Martin Pipe 4/7 and Paul Nicholls 5/4 to land the title. What
is certain is that we are in for another close race and one that could go all
the way to the wire”.
VC
Bet's
Following a brilliant week-end at the Cheltenham
Open Meeting when Martin Pipe was responsible for six winners who amassed over £120,000
in prize money VC Bet have cut his odds from 10/11 to 4/7 to be Champion National
Hunt Trainer this season.
NATIONAL HUNT CHAMPION TRAINER 2005/6
(Based on prize money, finishes April 2006)
4/7 M C Pipe
5/4 P F Nicholls
12 Jonjo O’Neill
14 J Howard Johnson
25 P J Hobbs
Win only, Others on request
Martin Pipe
Since taking out his professional racehorse
trainer's licence in 1975, Martin Pipe CBE has taken traditional and
orthodox training methods and techniques and turned them upside down. In
doing so he has also taken the record books and turned them into confetti.
Born 29 th May 1945 in Wellington Hospital,
Somerset, Martin Charles Pipe is the son of late West Country bookmaker
David Pipe Snr. Indeed,
Martin's early ambitions were not in the direction of training, but to
follow in the footsteps of his father and become a "Turf Accountant",
serving his apprenticeship in the Taunton office.
When his father sold his chain of betting
offices in 1973 and bought a derelict pig farm, Martin started his training
career with a few Point to Pointer's - just for fun. After enjoying his initial successes
in the amateur ranks, Martin turned professional trainer and produced his
first winner "under rules" on 9 th May 1975, in a selling hurdle
at Taunton with the appropriately named "Hit Parade". Since
then the winners have continued to flow in ever more increasing and regular
fashion, and in the 1999/2000 season, he smashed his own record by producing
a staggering 243 winners in a single term.
Today Martin Pipe stands at the pinnacle of
his profession as the only British trainer to have produced 200 winners
in a season, and the only British trainer to have won over 3,000 races. He also holds the record
for the most win & place prize money in a single season, and the fastest
50, 100, 150 and 200 winners in a season. Martin has won the trainer's
championship a record fourteen times and has been the leading trainer in
terms of winners every year since 1985.
In 2000 Martin was awarded his biggest accolade yet, a CBE in the Queen's
New Year's Honours List - a well deserved recognition for a career that
has revolutionised racehorse training forever.
Paul Nicholls
Nicholls is one of the younger generation of trainers and has the look
of a future champion.
He has finished runner-up to Martin Pipe for the last four years but
the increasing depth of talent in his stable means he is edging closer
to the trainers' title all the time.
Nicholls enjoyed 130 winners in his career as a professional jump jockey,
including two Hennessy Gold Cups and a Welsh National.
After learning his trade with David Barons, Nicholls took out a training
licence in 1991.
His best horse to date has been See More Business, who won the King George
VI Chase twice and the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1999 in what proved to be
the trainer's best Festival to date.
As well as the Gold Cup, Nicholls landed the Queen Mother Champion Chase
with Call Equiname and saddled Flagship Uberalles to victory in the Arkle.
Flagship Uberalles has since moved on, but Nicholls is confident in his
younger crop including Azertyuoip, who claimed the Arkle Chase at the 2003
Cheltenham Festival.
Nicholls enjoyed success in the Scottish Grand National with Belmont
King in 1997.
More recently Ad Hoc won the Whitbread Gold Cup in 2001 and was going
well before being brought down in last year's Grand National.
