Run over 2 miles, 4 furlongs and 56 yards on the New Course at Prestbury Park, Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle is open to horses aged four years and upwards and, as the title suggests, restricted to young, inexperienced conditional jockeys. The eponymous Martin Pipe was, of course, the force majeure in National Hunt racing for twenty years or more, winning the trainers’ title a record 15 times between 1988–89 and 2004–05, including 10 in a row in the last decade of his career, which was curtailed by ill health.
Currently scheduled as the seventh and final race on the fourth day of the Cheltenham Festival, a.k.a. Gold Cup Day, the race is a fairly recent addition to the programme as recently as 2009, when the racing schedule underwent significant. In its short history, no horse or jockey has won the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle, but it should come as no real surprise to learn that the most successful trainer, so far, is Willie Mullins, who has ruled the roost at the Cheltenham Festival for the last decade or so. All told Mullins has saddled a record 94 winners at the March showpiece and has been crowned top trainer 10 times since 2011, including the last five years in a row. Indeed, in 2022, he surpassed his own record for most wins at a single Festival when saddling ten winners, including five on the final day.
As far as the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle is concerned, Mullins opened his account with subsequent Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Sir Des Champs in 2011 and his since carried off the lion’s share of the now £75,000 prize money on three other occasions. His three other winners were Don Poli in 2014, Killultagh Vic in 2015 and Galopin Des Champs, who subsequently won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 2021.