Small is beautiful
Sir: All lovers of National Hunt Racing will applaud Lord Oaksey's praise of Peter Scu- damore, i.e., record-breaking jockey (Books, 12 February).
But the venerable Oaksey reiterates a myth: that champion trainer Martin Pipe 'invented' a new method of training. He certainly didn't. Oaksey talks of 'a revolu- tion in the way jump racehorses are trained'. And of 'a brand new system of training'. But if good John Oaksey casts his mind back to the Fifties and his visits to my Chilterns stables he must recall that 'inter- val training' coupled with short bursts up steep hills were precisely what we prac- tised! Our use of interval training evolved from getting fit for football at school. But the darts up hills had a simpler cause: we had no proper gallops.
There were, and are, many small success- ful trainers. Usually when they move to grand gallops their strike rate of winners crumbles. QED.
It would be nice for the record to note that from our little stable of a dozen horses we produced by these primitive methods proportionately more winners at Chel- tenham and Sandown than has the mighty Pipe with all his hundreds of horses. In racing nothing is new.
Ivor Herbert
The Old Rectory, Bradenham, Near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
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