Still relishing the challenge

Just in case anyone had missed the helicopter in the garage, Martin Pipe walked eight of his horses around its helipad yesterday morning, as if to emphasise that Pond House in Nicholashayne, on the Devon-Somerset border, is a National Hunt stable in a different league to most of its rivals.

The foot soldiers on parade yesterday will form part of his team for the three-day Open meeting at Cheltenham this weekend, including Our Vic, the joint-favourite for the Paddy Power Gold Cup, but with 160 horses in the yard in all, Pipe's team will be as powerful as ever as he seeks his 16th jumps trainers' championship in the last 18 years.

It was a close run thing last time around but the final table confirmed that the man who changed jump racing for good simply by ensuring that his horses are always healthy and fighting fit is still a step ahead of his rivals.

The constant thrust of daily competition still excites him, and the challenge of beating off the opposition keeps him young. His near-neighbours Paul Nicholls and Philip Hobbs will be obvious rivals this season. But if Pipe feels the laurel wreath slipping, he hides it very well.

"We've got more machines in the veterinary box and also in the laboratory," Pipe said yesterday. "They mean that we can do our own individual tests on all the horses, which tell us a lot more.

"I really do love trying to understand the inside of the horse, both physically and mentally. Blood testing is really fascinating. You just never stop learning when you're doing it."

Pipe was 60 earlier this year, and has been jumping's pre-eminent trainer for nearly two decades. But that has not stopped him re-inventing himself in recent years.

Gone are many of the whippet-like hurdlers he used to recruit from the Flat to run up sequences at Taunton, Exeter and Newton Abbot. Instead, thanks to the massive investment of his principal owner, David Johnson, even the younger horses at Pond House are now bought as chasers in the making.

"There are a lot more chasers here now, bigger, stronger horses and better horses," Pipe said.

"You can't buy them off the Flat any more, they send them off to Dubai or wherever and you've got no chance, and it's also getting much harder to claim them in France, like we did with Blowing Wind, who won twice at the Festival."

Pipe has dominated the Open meeting in recent seasons, winning its feature race seven times in all, and saddling seven winners over the three days in the last two seasons. The support for Our Vic in this year's Paddy Power, though, shows just how much faith the punters have in him, as the horse has failed to complete in his last three starts.

Celestial Gold, Pipe's winner of the race 12 months ago, heads 27 possible runners for the Paddy Power Gold Cup after yesterday's five-day declarations, but it is Our Vic, 4 to 1 joint-favourite with Monkerhostin with the sponsors, who is the pick of the public.

"He had an awful fall at Cheltenham last December, the screens were up around him but luckily he was okay," Pipe said. "In hindsight, we should probably have given him the rest of the season off, and he just wasn't enjoying it in his next two races.

"Physically he seemed okay, but perhaps mentally he just wasn't able to cope. He seems happy enough now, but the first test of that will be when he goes flat out in a race, because you just can't do that at home."

Therealbandit, the runner-up in the Pillar Chase last year, is another possible runner for Pipe in the Paddy Power, while Buena Vista, undefeated in four starts this season, is an intended runner in the novice hurdle which opens the meeting on Friday.

Lough Derg and Tamarinbleu could be contenders for novice chases, Standin Obligation for a handicap hurdle. Don't Be Shy, a fine young hurdler in France last year, goes to the Greatwood Hurdle on Sunday.

"I still feel like a schoolkid and I still enjoy the challenge of working it all out," Pipe said later.

"You see one of yours win, and you think, 'I've got a race for that, I know where it's going'. And I love to see the young horses schooling, see them go in and attack their fences. It's like every day is the first day of school."

Guardian Service