Martin Pipe: 'I had 31 winners in six seasons - then Baron Blakeney came along'

Martin Pipe hops up from the sofa, bounces across the room and points animatedly at a picture frame hanging on the wall. In it are four photos which when viewed from right to left tell the story of a finish at the Cheltenham Festival, which even after 40 years still has the power to energise.

"Scu used to hate that picture," he says, making a worthy bid to suppress a smile. "Every time he came to the house it annoyed him and eventually he asked me to take it down."

Pipe and Peter Scudamore forged a ground-breaking partnership between 1986 and 1993, but the images on the wall were captured in 1981, when they worked on opposite sides of the fence, Scudamore as stable jockey to the all-conquering David Nicholson and Pipe as a pipsqueak West Country trainer with just a handful of winners to his name.