How Pipe and McCoy gave bookies a bloody nose with Cheltenham Festival 'certainty'

From 10 to 1, our countdown of the greatest gambles of all time. A new instalment will be published every weekday for the next fortnight. Today – No.5: Unsinkable Boxer and the 1998 Gold Card Hurdle Final

The background

Few men have made as big an impact on jump racing as Martin Pipe, who revolutionised the sport in the late 20th century.

The bookmaker's son from the west country may have been only a modest amateur rider himself but he was a colossus as a trainer and transformed the way horses were prepared.

He got them fitter than anyone at home and took advantage of their condition by having the jockey set them off in front to run their rivals into the ground.

By 1998 he had outpointed most of the traditional trainers and won a string of big races, taking the Champion Hurdle with Granville Again in 1993 and Make A Stand in 1997 and the Grand National with comedian Freddie Starr's Miinnehoma in 1994.

He was on course to be champion trainer for the eighth time but no bookmaker's son is ever averse to a bet, whatever the top-level success he may have achieved.

Pond House remained a punting yard, one made all the more powerful by teaming up with champion jockey Tony McCoy, whose remarkable will to win was matched only by that of the trainer.

The build-up

Unsinkable Boxer proved very sinkable in his early years and had just a win in a Tipperary bumper to show from 13 starts for breeder Mary Condon.

Nor were there any knockout blows when he was bought by Jersey-based businessman Paul Green and sent to his son Nick Walker.

But Pipe made his name with the way that he transformed horses who had underachieved elsewhere and he worked the trick once again with Unsinkable Boxer, who won his first three starts for the yard, at Plumpton, Fontwell and Doncaster.

Martin Pipe: sent out Unsinkable Boxer to strike in 1998Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

He was earmarked for the Gold Card Hurdle Final, a usually ultra-competitive handicap at the Cheltenham Festival in which he would race off a mark 35lb higher than when joining the yard.

Yet Unsinkable Boxer was backed from a morning 9-2 into red-hot 5-2 favourite in a field of 24. "Everybody wanted to back it to the exclusion of everything else," recalled bookmaker Geoff Banks.

No wonder. A supremely confident Pipe's last words to McCoy before the race were: "This horse is the biggest certainty that will ever walk out on to this racecourse."

The race

Nothing ever looked like coming to the bookmakers' rescue as Unsinkable Boxer cruised throughout the race.

McCoy's strength in the saddle was legendary yet none of it was needed here as he sliced through the field and made second favourite Tompetoo looked decidedly second-rate. He sauntered past him to win by a facile four lengths – "led on bit approaching 2 out, canter," was the Racing Post close-up comment that summed up his supremacy.

"I hardly broke sweat, he hardly broke sweat, and we cruised up the hill," McCoy recalled  in his autobiography.

The aftermath

Unsinkable Boxer returned to huge cheers from the crowd and an eerie silence in the betting ring – bookmaker Neil Channing took an hour to pay out winning punters and the losses across the industry ran into the millions.

The horse showed what he had had in hand that day by landing a Grade 1 race at Aintree the following month and also won twice over fences.

Pipe retired in 2006 with 15 trainers' titles and 34 winners at the Cheltenham Festival, where there is now a race named in his honour – and the bookmakers may finally be recouping some of their losses as only one favourite has won it in 13 runnings.

The scores

Audacity There have rarely been few bigger plot races than what is now known as the Pertemps, so connections could hardly have picked a tougher target. 8

Ingenuity Nothing too clever required when you have 35lb in hand. 5

Ease of win Never in doubt. 9

Money won One of the great public gambles that cost the industry millions. 7

Gamble marks 29

Read more in our Greatest Gambles series:

Pasternak (6): Sir Mark Prescott and Pasternak's very public Cambridgeshire gamble   

Frankincense (7): 'He was a certainty' - Barry Hills and a famous Lincoln touch   

Exponential (8): Patrick Veitch and one of the biggest gambles of the modern era   

Reveillez (9): 'I couldn't let him run loose at 6-1!' - JP McManus makes a fortune at Cheltenham   

Great Things (10): 'Don't bother coming back if you get beat' - Albert Davison's Leicester words