sport news We're like an old married couple!: It's a blast from the past for racing icons ... trends now

Two racing icons, intrinsically linked, are back together and their bond and mutual respect are instantly evident.

Fifteen-time champion jumps trainer Martin Pipe and eight-time champion jump jockey Peter Scudamore, two men who redefined their sport, are exchanging anecdotes and memories.

It’s just like the old days when Pipe says wife Carol reckoned he spent so much time on the phone to his stable jockey that he should have married him instead.

When Carol joins the record-breaking couple, she confirms there were times when she felt there were three people in her marriage. The bickering couple allegory is hardly diminished when Pipe says of his relationship with Scudamore: ‘We never fell out but we fell out every hour!’

Carol adds: ‘They were on the phone for hour after hour. I could have cited Scu for divorce. They argued once about not going fast enough in a race. They sat down and argued as they timed how long it had taken between two hurdles while watching the race replay on the television.’

Another of Carol’s memories gives an insight into just how much it meant to the Pipes when Scudamore-ridden Granville Again won the Champion Hurdle 30 years ago.

Pipe had already landed eight of his 34 Cheltenham Festival wins by the time Granville Again beat Royal Derbi by a length, but this was the first really big one, the first time they had secured one of the championship races.

‘I got the winner’s rug that had been put on Granville, spread it on our bed that night and we slept under it,’ said Carol.

The Pipe story seems wonderful and romantic now, but at the time it was played out against a backdrop of suspicion and jealousy. Bookmaker’s son Pipe came into the sport knowing nothing, but voraciously soaked up all the information he could. Not weighed down by convention, he then revolutionised training methods, adopting an interval system that made his horses fitter than anyone else’s.

He replaced guesswork with science, regularly blood-testing his horses and compiling an encyclopaedic card system which recorded every detail about each of his horses from their racing weight to race-influencing traits.

It left the opposition standing and some didn’t like it. Pipe was accused of witchcraft, and others would whisper he might be able to win insignificant races by the bucket load, but the big ones were beyond him.

Scudamore says: ‘Refreshingly, Martin was never cluttered by traditions. I would say to him, “Up at Lambourn, we do this”, and he would ask why.