Cheltenham Festival

Run over 2 miles, 4 furlongs and 56 yards on the New Course at Prestbury Park, Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle is open to horses aged four years and upwards and, as the title suggests, restricted to young, inexperienced conditional jockeys. The eponymous Martin Pipe was, of course, the force majeure in National Hunt racing for twenty years or more, winning the trainers’ title a record 15 times between 1988–89 and 2004–05, including 10 in a row in the last decade of his career, which was curtailed by ill health.

Currently scheduled as the seventh and final race on the fourth day of the Cheltenham Festival, a.k.a. Gold Cup Day, the race is a fairly recent addition to the programme as recently as 2009, when the racing schedule underwent significant. In its short history, no horse or jockey has won the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle, but it should come as no real surprise to learn that the most successful trainer, so far, is Willie Mullins, who has ruled the roost at the Cheltenham Festival for the last decade or so. All told Mullins has saddled a record 94 winners at the March showpiece and has been crowned top trainer 10 times since 2011, including the last five years in a row. Indeed, in 2022, he surpassed his own record for most wins at a single Festival when saddling ten winners, including five on the final day.

As far as the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle is concerned, Mullins opened his account with subsequent Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Sir Des Champs in 2011 and his since carried off the lion’s share of the now £75,000 prize money on three other occasions. His three other winners were Don Poli in 2014, Killultagh Vic in 2015 and Galopin Des Champs, who subsequently won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 2021.

The Cathcart Challenge Cup was inaugurated in 1938 and named in memory of Frederick Cathcart, former Chairman of Cheltenham Racecourse, who died four years earlier, but was responsible for the creation on the Cheltenham Gold Cup, as a steeplechase, in 1924 and the Champion Hurdle in 1927. The race was always a steeplechase, but was run in various guises down the years, including an abortive stint as the Cathcart Champion Hunters’ Chase between 1975 and 1977. Most recently, though, it was a Grade 2 contest, run over 2 miles and 5 furlongs on the New Course at Cheltenham and open to first- and second-season steeplechasers.

The Cathcart Challenge Cup was run for the last time on March 18, 2004 and won by the six-year-old Our Armageddon, trained by Richard Guest and ridden by Larry McGrath, who made all the running to beat Iris Royal by 2½ lengths. The following year, the race was replaced by the Festival Trophy, initially sponsored by the Daily Telegraph, which was open to steeplechasers at all levels of experience. In 2006, Ryanair took over the sponsorship and, two years later, the newly-titled Ryanair Chase was promoted to Grade 1 status; alongside the Stayers’ Hurdle, the Ryanair Chase is one of the feature races on day three of the Cheltenham Festival.

Like its successor, the Cathcart Challenge Cup was a ‘championship’ race over a distance intermediate between that of the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Cheltenham Gold Cup. For the record, since World War II, the legendary Fred Winter was the leading trainer with seven wins, courtesy of Soloning (1972), Soothsayer (1974), Roller Coaster (1979), Dramatist (1982), Observe (1983) and Half Free (1986 and 1987).

Bred at the Gerrardstown House Stud in Dunshauglin, County Meath, Our Conor was initially campaigned on the Flat by leading Irish jumps trainer Dessie Hughes, winning twice, at Roscommon and Naas, as a three-year-old, in the summer of 2012. Sent over obstacles that autumn, he made a winning debut in a maiden hurdle, again at Naas, justifying odds-on favouritism with an easy, 8½-length victory. He did so again in a Grade 3 juvenile hurdle at Fairyhouse the following month and, the following February, made a seamless transition to the highest level with a comfortable, 5-length defeat of the hitherto unbeaten Diakali, trained by Willie Mullins, in the Grade 1 Spring Juvenile Hurdle at Fairyhouse.

Our Conor subsequently arrived at the Cheltenham Festival boasting a 3-3 record over hurdles and, consequently, was sent off 4/1 joint second favourite for the Triumph Hurdle. Once again, he more than justified his market position, effortlessly drawing clear between the final two flights to win, impressively, by 15 lengths. Unsurprisingly, he was promoted to favouritism for the 2014 Champion Hurdle and, a few days later, sold to leading owner Barry Connell, for an undisclosed sum, although Connell declared himself ‘delighted to have the opportunity to buy him’.

The change of ownership meant that regular jockey Bryan Cooper, who had ridden Our Conor to all four wins over hurdles, was replaced by Danny Mullins, who was retained by Connell. Thereafter, barring a tenderly-handled fourth place on the Flat at Naas, the Jeremy gelding was campaigned exclusively at Grade 1 level over hurdles for the remainder of his tragically short career

However, he never won again. He was beaten by Hurricane Fly in the Ryanair Hurdle and the Irish Champion Hurdle, both at Leopardstown, before crossing swords with the defending champion for the third time in as many starts in the Champion Hurdle proper at Cheltenham. Sent off at 5/1 fourth favourite, he led as far as the third flight, where he took a horrific fall, sustaining a serious back injury. After extensive treatment by veterinary surgeons, he was humanely euthanised.

By his own admission, Martin Pipe ‘never, ever, wanted to be a trainer.’ However, with his brief, less-than-prolific career as an amateur rider cut short by a broken thigh in 1972, Pipe did, indeed, turn his attention to training at a then-derelict farm in Nicholashayne, near Wellington, Somerset two years later. Reflecting on those early days, he once told the ‘Racing Post’, ‘I didn’t know anything about training when I started, I didn’t have a clue.’

After a slow, nay tortoiselike, start, Pipe first attracted the attention of the wider racing public when, in 1981, he saddled his first Cheltenham Festival winner, Baron Blakeney, ridden by Paul Leach, in the Triumph Hurdle. Belying odds of 66/1, Baron Blakeney made relentless progress from the final flight to collar the 7/4 favourite, Broadsword, trained by David Nicholson and ridden by Peter Scudamore, in the closing stages, landing a gamble in the process.

The rest, as they say, is history. Pipe would win the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship for the first in 1988/89, with an eye-watering 208 winners. In the next 17 seasons until his retirement, due to ill health, in April, 2006, he would relinquish the trainers’ title just three times, to David Nicholson in 1993/94 and 1994/95 and to Paul Nicholls (who was winning his first title) in 2005/06.

Unremarkably, Pipe still holds the record for the most trainers’ titles (15) and the most consecutive titles (10) in National Hunt history.

Indeed, his revolutionary, scientific approach to training, coupled with a knack for placing his horses, led Pipe to a career total of 4,191 winners, including several high-profile winners on the Flat. It is difficult to argue with former stable jockey Peter Scudamore, who once said of Pipe, ‘Quite simply, he was a genius of his time.’