MARTIN Pipe trained 4180 winners - more than anyone else in Britain and was crowned Champion Trainer 15 times between 1988-9 and 2005-6.

It may seem hard to believe but it’s 50 years since Martin saddled his first ever winner, Hit Parade at Taunton on May 9, 1975.

Recently I was lucky enough to catch up with the maestro whose methods revolutionised the way that racehorses were trained.

“I never wanted to be a racehorse trainer really- it just evolved,” said Martin who celebrates his 80th birthday at the end of this month.

“I started to ride and I couldn’t, so I took up training but never thought I’d train a winner and eventually I had one Hit Parade that won the worse race on the card at Taunton, the selling hurdle.

“I bought Hit Parade out of a seller at Taunton from Gay Kindersley. He was a very moderate horse although he wasn’t moderate in my eyes, he was very good.

“We had the race mapped for him at Taunton in one of the last meetings of the season, the right distance, the ground was good and we managed to win.

“I knew absolutely nothing about training horses so this one was tailor made for me, although I wouldn’t admit that at the time. Lenny Lungo was on board- his first ever winner for me.

“He used to work for Gerald Cotterell at Cullompton after which he’d come and ride out and helped me to train it; in fact he helped me to get Hit Parade fit.

“Len knew how to ride him - basically he had to make all and he wanted a fast pace. The plan was to go out, make all and win. I told Lenny he could keep the prize money if he won.

“We got him fit and backed him- I got a friend to put £1000 on for me at Taunton, which was a lot of money in those days and he won. He went off in front, jumped well, made all and won by seven lengths.

“Hit Parade wasn’t the best of jumpers so Lenny walked the course beforehand and loosened all the second hurdles on the inside, he eased them, which of course you wouldn’t be allowed to do today.

“I was elated and thrilled to bits and thought that I could train horses, but it was a long wait until I had the next winner.”

Martin’s next winner was on 10th October when Vengo won a seller at Exeter. “It was my ambition to win all the sellers in those days- they all counted. I only had three or four horses back then but that was the start of it all. By the end of that first season I’d had five winners - Hit Parade won three of them, it was very exciting.”

What had Martin learned in that first season? “I just tried to get them fit which was the most important part. I hadn’t really started doing things the way that I trained later. I just started in the old fashioned way around a field - we had no gallops or nothing like that back then.”

From those humble beginnings Martin Pipe went onto become the most successful ever racehorse trainer - a quite remarkable achievement for a bookmaker’s son from Taunton