'There were lots of bad words between us' - inside the most compelling and controversial title race of all time

As the 2024-25 British trainers' championship approaches its conclusion at Sandown on Saturday, we are republishing this fascinating in-depth report by Peter Thomas on the tempestuous race for the 2004-05 trainers' title between Martin Pipe and Paul Nicholls and the controversy it stirred.

This article was first published on March 17, 2025 exclusively for Racing Post+ Ultimate subscribers. Sign up to Racing Post+ now for full access to our racecards and analysis content, expert tipping advice from the likes of TomSegal and Paul Kealy and all of our award-winning journalism. Use the code ALL256 to get 25% off your first six months!

As the final, post-Cheltenham phase of the season begins, with the glittering prizes of Aintree still left to scrap over, Dan Skelton has a commanding lead in the trainers' table, leaving Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson scrambling to keep up.

The race may become more frantic, who knows* (Editor's note: boy, does it), but it would take something truly extraordinary for it to match the 2004-05 campaign for intensity and, indeed, controversy, as Nicholls and Martin Pipe went toe to toe for the title on the final day. 

When all was said and done it came down to £72,545, which may sound like a lot of money, but as a winning margin in the context of a season-long battle, it really isn't. And believe me, a lot was said and done, some of which probably shouldn't have been.

In summary, Pipe edged out Nicholls to be champion for the 15th and final time, with both men breaking the previous record for prize-money earned and Nicholls taking over the mantle of perpetual champion the following season.

Behind the data, however, lurked private enmity. Nicholls was the champion in waiting, but how long he'd have to wait would be determined by a desperate fortnight of protracted combat, which dragged each of them into decisions and courses of action that, while fascinating for the psychiatrists among us, drew distaste from ordinary racing fans.

This is the story of how the race for the title means so much that it can become too much; of how historic wounds can be opened up by fresh affronts and turn a sporting clash into a blood feud; hopefully, also, of how time and respect can eventually win the day.

'I was like a volcano about to erupt'

It could never be said that Nicholls and Pipe were bosom buddies. It may be more accurate to say that their relationship from time to time spat fire like a West Country Vesuvius.

Perhaps it was the ferociously competitive nature of both; maybe their doggedly obsessive natures, hemmed in by the county borders of Somerset. What's for certain is that Pipe was the greatest trainer of his, perhaps any, generation, but his time at the top was drawing to a close and the younger man was snapping at his heels.

If you're looking, though, for something more specific to blame for the mistrust that existed between them, and which was about to rear its unsavoury head once more, look no further than the 1998 Cheltenham Gold Cup, when Nicholls' fiery temper got the better of him and common sense became a victim of hot-headed misjudgement.

The cause of it all was freakish and, with the benefit of hindsight, forgivable, but at the time, when Pipe's Cyborgo – ridden by the Ditcheat trainer's old ally AP McCoy – suffered an injury mid-race and was pulled sideways out of the action by the champion jockey, crucially taking two others with him, other interpretations were available.

That one of the sufferers should be Nicholls' great hope See More Business was, in the cold light of day, nothing but coincidence, but at the time it seemed to Nicholls that he had been the victim of a grave injustice, and there was only one man to blame.

"I was like a volcano about to erupt," he admitted in his autobiography Lucky Break (in a chapter called War in the West, no less). "My first reaction was that we'd been the victim of a conspiracy."

Paul Nicholls and Martin Pipe keep their distance in the paddock at Sandown on the final day of the 2004-05 seasonCredit: Edward Whitaker

So when he saw Pipe, Nicholls reacted furiously: "Just the sight of his foxy face set me off . . . I was all set to grab the lapels of his coat and lift him off the ground as I told him, 'I'll wipe that f***ing smile off your face one day if it's the last thing I do.'"

A year later, a spectacular Cheltenham Festival meant there was a bit of a dress rehearsal for the big title dust-up as Nicholls landed running and tried to extend his lead of around £100,000 at the head of the table.

Pipe's superior firepower, however, soon sealed the outcome, with the eventual runner-up grumbling about the winner's tactic of block-booking entries wherever he could.

Nicholls was later moved to admit that, "because I got totally caught up in the race for the title I'd run horses that should have been at home in their boxes or already out to grass . . . I made decisions that I knew were wrong . . . Never again."

When 2005 came around, there was 'previous' that had clearly not been forgotten, lessons that weren't remembered, to the point where "Martin and I ended up punching ourselves to a standstill like two bare-knuckle prize fighters".

'All he cared about was the championship'

It was a strange kind of enmity. Nicholls freely admitted that he based much of his training technique on Pipe's methods, confessing to a great admiration and respect for him, putting their lack of a genuine personal connection down to a generational gap. Soon, however, that gap would turn into a dangerous and unbridgeable gulf.

With Nicholls virtually unrepresented in the summer part of the 2004-05 season, he found himself some £300,000 behind Pipe when the 'season proper' got under way, even further when Celestial Gold bagged the valuable double of the Paddy Power and the Hennessy. The challenger hit back with a vengeance, however, as Royal Auclair, Le Roi Miguel and Azertyuiop led his assault on the major pre-Christmas prizes.

Having top owner David Johnson in his corner enabled Pipe to nudge his way back into contention – thanks in no small part to It Takes Time, Contraband and Well Chief – and as Cheltenham drew to a close, he had regained the lead.

Well Chief (right): one of Martin Pipe's stars in the 2004-05 season, helping him to establish a lead over Paul Nicholls after the Cheltenham FestivalCredit: Whitaker Edward

Defeats for Nicholls in the 2005 Grand National and Scottish National tempered optimism, but he had still cut Pipe's lead to around £50,000 with a week to go. At that point, though, Pipe came out all guns blazing, mustering a mighty 34 runners on the final Friday of the season, with Nicholls unearthing 15 of his own, only to see the pick of them, Andreas, coming down at the last at Perth with the race at his mercy, opening the door for Sardagna – trained, of course, by Pipe.

"Martin was extremely competitive, that’s why he got where he is," conceded Nicholls, "and it’s the way I am. I never lost respect for him. You have to respect someone as successful as him; but, at times, it seemed all he cared about was the championship."

Pipe sent out 459 more runners than the master of Ditcheat in the course of the season – who's to say what Nicholls would have done if he'd had the numbers – and it turned out to be a battle won by the man with more ammunition, rather than one of strike-rates and percentages (Nicholls scored at 22 per cent through the season and Pipe at 17).

The main gripe from Nicholls concerned some of the tactics the winner used, which made sure he had no chance to even get some of his shots off.

Nicholls believed his The Persuader was a banker in the opening handicap hurdle at Sandown on the Saturday, but when the declarations were announced, it turned out that Pipe was responsible for ten of the 20-strong field, eliminating The Persuader. To make matters worse, three of Pipe's were taken out on the morning of the race, while the Nicholls contender languished in his box. Peter Bowen won it with Yes Sir, while Pipe picked up prize-money in second, third and fifth.

"It was all within the rules and there were probably reasons for them not running," insists Pipe to this day. "I'd have probably run them all if I could have done and I'm sure Paul would have done the same if it had been the other way round."

Heaping ignominy on ignominy, Pipe's Sindapour, who the day before had fallen at Newton Abbot, trailed in last of the 15 finishers, while Commercial Flyer was fifth home, having his third race in three days after an overnight trip from Perth.

No matter that the six-year-old produced, on independent ratings, a lifetime-best performance, the decision to run him drew strong criticism from the RSPCA's David Muir, who called it "outrageous" and not "conducive to equine welfare". A few members of the press were also critical of Pipe and the proceedings turned decidedly sour.

The RSPCA's David Muir criticised Martin Pipe for running Commercial Flyer three times in three daysCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

Pipe, characteristically, defends his tactics with the same science that made him initially so mistrusted and soon so successful as he redefined the art of training.

"Was it bad for racing?" he asks rhetorically. "People always say that, but on what evidence? Did they take blood tests the way we did? If you take blood tests and they're okay, that tells you so much about the horses.

"The figures say Commercial Flyer ran the best race of his career at Sandown. Our horses passed the stringent tests we did on the day, and although sometimes the results would take a few hours and they'd only come through when the horses were travelling, they wouldn't run if the tests said they shouldn't. I think the results vindicated what we did."

'You take out your battalions and run them, don't you?'

There was precedent for much of this activity. In 1999, Pipe had sent out 26 horses in 18 races on the penultimate day of the campaign – including seven of the 18 in a lowly Uttoxeter seller – to Nicholls' three.

"I always planned to have a lot of runners," he explained at the time. "After all, we didn't know what Mr Nicholls had planned and I had to make sure of winning the title. I had so many runners in the Uttoxeter seller as I wanted to support [racecourse owner] Stan Clarke in putting on such good prize-money."

If there was an element of humour involved then (intentional or otherwise), there was precious little now, as Nicholls soldiered on with a sense of resentment, needing to win both of the remaining big races at Sandown to have a chance of nabbing the title.

Nicholls remembered shaking Pipe's hand after Well Chief (one of Pipe's five runners in a nine-runner heat, ridden by former Nicholls ally Timmy Murphy) had outpointed Azertyuiop (11-10 favourite and the best of Ditcheat's four), congratulating him for what was now a done deal before spending the rest of the afternoon in the box with his horse, who had suffered a tendon injury so severe that he never ran again.

Martin Pipe: flanked by jockey Timmy Murphy and owner David JohnsonCredit: Edward Whitaker

The fact that Whitenzo, the pick of Nicholls' three runners in the Betfred Gold Cup, earned £7,500 for finishing fifth – ahead of all of Pipe's seven – was of little consequence. The title was going to Pond House again and Nicholls was runner-up again, for the seventh year running.

Racing struggled to find positives in what had been a titanic, but deeply flawed, struggle.

Pipe, having prevailed by £2,826,750 to £2,754,205, later made it plain that this was a swansong that meant a lot to him, a scrap it would have hurt to lose.

"That was the most special because the last few seasons have been a battle," he said, and while reaction at the time was often negative, he now points to recent events to justify it all.

"It's top-level sport and people play all the cards they have," he says. "Yes, I lay in bed at night working out how to win it that year, but then I did that every year. You take out your battalions and run them, don't you?

"Paul was different from me but we both wanted to win and we both sent out all the horses we thought were capable of running, although I think he didn't have that many horses left by that stage of the season.

"Look at what happens now. Why does Willie Mullins run so many horses in a race at Cheltenham? What's wrong with that? We're all just jealous that he's got so many horses."

'Maybe it wasn't anybody's finest hour'

After a suitable cessation of hostilities, Nicholls suggested that relations between the two men had calmed: "We've shaken hands a few times since and he sent me the most wonderful letter when I got my OBE [in 2020], which meant a huge amount."

Pipe acknowledges that there was little love lost, but that it is now firmly in the past.

"There was stacks of competition and lots of bad words between us before but we're great buddies now," he says. "We talk to each other all the time at the races.

"It was just competition. If you want to get to the top, you do whatever you can in every race, every season, but you don't sacrifice the horses, that's the most important thing."

Nicholls can afford a philosophical look back at what proved to be the year before he became king.

"You reflect on it differently now than when you were in the thick of it," he says. "It was all very competitive and everybody was getting wound up, the way they do in these situations, so it maybe wasn't anybody's finest hour, but that's top-level sport.

"You see football managers falling over each other all the time on the touchline and nobody bats an eyelid – it's seen as part of the attraction of the game – but in racing there's a feeling that we have to do everything nice and above board, which isn't always easy.

"Things got a bit lively, but we've kissed and made up now."

Perhaps it wasn't racing's most edifying clash of titans. But nobody could take their eyes off it, that much is certain.

Read these next:

Willie Mullins 1-12 to retain trainers' title after slashing Dan Skelton's advantage by more than half on big day at Perth 

ITV viewers in for Saturday title treat after Sandown announces series of changes to jumps finale card 

Willie Mullins attempting to 'cover all bases' as Lossiemouth and co concern title rival Dan Skelton 

Subscribe to Racing Post + Ultimate and get 25% off your first six months!

Available to new subscribers purchasing Members' Club Ultimate using code ED256 through the Racing Post website. First three payments will be charged at £37.49, subscription renews at full monthly price thereafter. To cancel please contact us at least seven days before subscription is due to renew.