Michael Dickinson: the Mad Genius whose obsession started a revolution

There are very few trainers who would ever have sought to tell Martin Pipe how to prepare a horse for the Cheltenham Festival, even fewer whose opinions would have been entertained by the Wellington Wizard, but there was one exceptional man who fell into both categories.

When Pipe, already with four jumps titles under his belt, was attempting to ready the troublesome Granville Again for the Champion Hurdle in 1993, he found himself uncharacteristically stumped by a talented animal with a weak constitution.

Burst blood vessels were hindering his progress towards the big day and a change of tack was needed, so the master of Pond House called the man who a decade earlier had set the jumps world on fire with his own ground-breaking methods. 'The Alchemist' turned to the man they call 'The Mad Genius' and the experiment was a resounding success.