Tony Pipe

Tony Pipe

The other Pipe of Nicholashayne

by Chris Pitt

"Winner trained at Nicholashayne, Devon” has been a common suffix to race results ever since Martin Pipe, and latterly son David, began training at Pond House 38 years ago.

But whereas Martin Pipe began his training career in 1977 – his first entry in Horses in Training was in 1978 – another member of the Pipe family was training at Nicholashayne before him.

Tony Pipe – Martin’s uncle – was born in Bathpool, on the northern outskirts of Taunton, on 8th January 1934. He was one of nine siblings, five boys and four girls, including David, who was to become Martin’s bookmaker father.

“I was christened Keith Anthony Pipe but my mother always called me Tony and it stuck,” he says. “My father used to do flapping racing. I rode them occasionally but John Foster rode most of them. I used to do a lot of hunting and had point-to-pointers.

“I did a stud groom’s course before I went into racing, then I spent a year with Captain Gerald Balding at Weyhill. I was a schooling jockey for him, but when he stood us all off at the end of the winter to let the Flat boys in, I didn’t want to sit around so I went home and looked for a job in the Horse and Hound.”

He answered an advert for a corn merchant cum farmer cum permit holder named Sidney Banks, who trained near Sandy, in Bedfordshire. Tony went for an interview and got the job. That was in 1957 and it marked the start of an eight-year association as stable jockey. Along with head lad Terry Smith, Tony was responsible for ‘doing his two’ of the four-horse Banks string.

“I did a bit of everything. In the summer, if I hadn’t come home to Somerset, I’d help with the corn, do a bit of farming. My family were farmers so I was used to it. It didn’t bother me to get a sack of corn on my back.”

Success did not come instantly. The falls came first. The worst was at Wye in March 1959 when Pipe’s mount Regal Son was one of half a dozen who got no further than the first fence, leaving him with a punctured lung and broken ribs.

“There’d been a heavy dew in the morning, which made it very slippery,” he recalls. “A lot of horses (21 ran) but a narrow little course. I decided to get out quick; his front legs opened, I went over, down came the rest with me. There was no St John ambulance man so the crowd dragged me off the course as the horses were coming round again. I could actually hear them coming.”

He was 27 when he rode his first winner on Piranha, at Doncaster on 14th March 1961.

Tony still remembers the post-race celebration. “Sidney said ‘you come back with me; we’ll have a drink on the way home. I went back in the car with him and his wife and we stopped at a little pub in Huntingdon. He walked in and ordered two small pale ales and a sherry, and that was our drink.

“Piranha was a cracking little horse; simple to ride. If he was wrong he’d puthimself right. If I was wrong he’d always find another leg on landing. He’d never fall on you. He was trained on the Flat by George Todd. I went down to Manton and fetched him to our yard.

“He loved Towcester. When I first rode him round there Sidney said to me, 'let somebody tow you up the hill and when you get to the top he’ll run away with you’. And he did. I just sat behind the first two, turned right-handed towards the winning post. He knew where he was; he heard the crowd and put his best foot forward.”

Tony rode Piranha to all of his nine hurdle victories, including four at Towcester. But according to the Sporting Life’s reporter, when he won the Sussex Handicap Hurdle (Div 1) on him at Fontwell in March 1964, it was a close call.

“There seemed little doubt that the favourite, Gliding Master, would have been the winner but for falling when in the lead two out.

This left Deal in front of Aemilianus, with the grey Piranha right on top of them.

“The last named overtook his two rivals and appeared likely to win by a length or more when Deal, strongly ridden by John Cook, staged a counter attack and looked certain to get up.

“Piranha managed to hold on by a head, so giving his owner-trainer Sidney Banks his 100th winner, including Flat races.”

He also won three times on a useful handicap hurdler called Scarab, while his sole winner over fences came on Dandy Scot at Market Rasen.

Altogether, 15 of Tony’s 16 winners were on horses trained by Banks. The other – the last of his career – was on Colchicum in March 1965 for permit holder Tom Wakefield, who trained at Caxton Gibbet, Cambridgeshire.

“I was getting knocked about a bit and I thought ‘time to get out’,” he reflects. “I was with Sidney Banks from 1957/58 and I left in 1965. I should never have left; he was like a father to me. But I finished with him in 1965, came home to Somerset and took up pig farming. The plan was always to go farming when I retired. I didn’t want to go training.”

He did, though, in 1969.

“I got conned into it,” he laughs. “We (with wife Diana) bought a little farm out the other side of Taunton at Adsborough and I was breeding pigs and doing quite well. Then Dave (Martin Pipe’s father) came out one day and said ‘I want to buy a farm’. I replied ‘well, get on and do it’. He found this one where we are now. It was called Tuckers Farm then, and I started training there.”

The gallops were 1,000 feet above sea level; a circuit of over a mile containing three regulation fences and hurdles, laid out on a plateau at the summit of a hill. A covering of good quality turf made it one of the best training grounds in the West Country.

Tony Pipe’s name first appears in the 1970 Horses in Training with 10 horses to his name at Tuckers Farm. The string had increased to 1971 edition, with his owners including one M C Pipe.

His most successful horse was selling chaser Old Paint, who won six races between April 1971 and March 1973 and was placed many times. A youthful John Francome won on him twice, including when landing a gamble one day at Warwick.

Old Paint was owned by Taunton bookmaker Alan Davey in partnership with Jenny Hembrow, who rode later Sandwilan in the 1979 and 1980 Grand Nationals. On his final start, aged 14, at Newton Abbot’s 1974 Easter fixture, Old Paint finished third, beaten a mere length and a half.

Tony and Dave Pipe eventually went their separate ways and Tony took his remaining owners with him. But he didn’t train for much longer – his final Horses in Training entry was in 1976 – and went back to farming, this time sheep and beef.

He acted as whipper-in with the Taunton Vale Harriers, a role he relinquished in 2008, and his son has now succeeded him in that role.

At 81, Tony Pipe is still active with his sheep and Angus beef cattle at Benshayne Farm, Nicholashayne, just a mile down the road from Pond House, where his nephew Martin Pipe and great-nephew David have enjoyed so much success and revolutionised the art of training racehorses.

As for Sidney Banks, he is commemorated by a hurdle race run at Huntingdon each February.

Keith Anthony Pipe rode a total of 16 winners during his career, his seasonal totals being: 1960/61: 4 wins from 22 rides;

1961/62: 5 wins from 28 rides; 1962/63: 2 wins from 24 rides; 1963/64: 4 wins from 33 rides; 1964/65: 1 win from 29 rides.

His winners in chronological order were:

1. Piranha, Doncaster, 14 March 1961

2. Piranha, Towcester, 1 April 1961

3. Piranha, Wye, 1 May 1961

4. Monarch’s Tutor, Market Rasen, 13 May 1961

5. Scarab, Windsor, 2 February 1962

6. Piranha, Wye, 14 April 1962

7. Windy Lad, Huntingdon, 23 April 1962

8. Piranha, Towcester, 12 May 1962

9. Piranha, Towcester, 11 June 1962

10. Dandy Scot, Market Rasen, 1 June 1963

11. Piranha, Huntingdon, 3 June 1963

12. Scarab, Haydock, 6 March 1964

13. Piranha, Fontwell, 11 March 1964

14. Scarab, Uttoxeter, 11 April 1964

15. Piranha, Towcester, 18 May 1964

16. Colchicum, Southwell, 8 March 1965