Above - the Mail's report on Chatam's Hennessy victory.

It's funny now to recall the bafflement and derision that Pipe faced at the time for his use of a mobile phone. Similar contempt was reserved for his use of blood testing, an all-weather gallop, interval training, a weighing machine and an equine swimming pool.

The old silver ring in the background now a block of flats

Chatam winning that 4yo handicap hurdle at Newbury by a distance in 1988 (sorry - it was the 1989 City Trial Hurdle which he won later)

He really was a magnificent tank of a horse.

Just looked back at the horse screaming i had forgotten he won it the race I meant was in 94 when 5 th behind one man on good to soft,clearly he enjoyed running at Newbury,

Screaming did he also run well in our Hennessy?

Geoff broadsword was a strong favourite in the 81 triumph hurdle but was caught by an unconsidered outsider baron blakeney trained by an unknown West Country trainer called Martin Pipe

Yes Nottingham was a great jumps tracks royal gait won there the season he became champion hurdler also remember uncle Ernie winning there before chasing home the brilliant remittance man in the arkle,uncle Ernie himself did win at the festival many years later not sure what race he won,earlier in the thread bookmaker numbers were mentioned back in the decade we are discussing there would be 4 rows of them for a midweek jumps fixture at Nottingham.

Hi Anorak,all that rings a bell,a pal of mine had a garage just outside Castleford and Bell would often drop in trying to sell him a horse and I remember a very green Osborne accompany him up there.
Bell always came across as a "bit of a lad" who wouldn't have a problem bending the rules a little.
The village he trained from was Ledston,quite a nice village considering its proximity to Cas.

great thread takes you back the good old days, just talking to a old racing friend this morning we were recalling when we went nearly every day and we never had a alcoholic drink it was just to important to risk a drink we used to look forward to our on course dinner which was surprisingly good sometimes, the cattericks on course was always a favourite, forward to today always a drink and chasing the ladies at the big meetings like york, racing is 2nd best now lol

Anorak - what a great thread. I had thought of doing a diary on here about my daily race-going but your idea of comparing with 30 years ago is a good one.

Onlooker - how I agree with you about the mid to end 1980's being the sport's best days.

So, some pretty random thoughts of mine.

I've been racing since I was 12 (with my dad back then, naturally) and now I'm 60 this year.

It is heartbreaking to see the decline, especially on the jumps.

I go racing around 4 times a week on average and have done so since retirement in 2013. Even since that year, there has been a noticeable decline.

Oddly enough, I can't really criticize AW because I hardly miss a meeting at Southwell and, if you find the right angle there, it is nothing like as hard as so many punters complain. Yes, the AW racing can be dire but it is better than the November to March drought that used to drag by in the past.

I still think the flat is OK (but declining) but the NH game is rapidly falling apart. Small fields, going all over the place and nobody at midweek meetings.

Last week at Donny, there were just 4 books in the Grandstand enclosure - two of them the same firm - and three in the County. The weather was terrible, the viewing deplorable and the racing pretty poor.

Indeed, why does Donny persist with NH? About a 1/4 of the track is obscured by trees and they have so many going issues. Leicester has the same going issues but did they abandon too quickly today there? I would have gone but the crowd would have been pitiful and the racing was only just about OK. Let's hope for some improvement at the end of this week.

We need a big shake up to the sport and more concentration on tracks that have going issues and cannot attract runners - instead of letting those same tracks persist in marketing stupid 'feature days'.

(At Uttoxeter pre-Xmas on a cold and wet Tuesday they persisted with a 'Xmas jumper' competition and a 'best dressed man' competition, despite barely scraping five entrants. It was embarrassing, noisy and completely out of character with a winter's day jump racing.)

I am not sure what the solutions are but racing needs to look at Greyhound Racing if it wants to see how it may well end up inside the next 10 years.

Alls well then just boarding for a short flight look forward to many other contributions to this thread.

Thanks Alan, was I searching the wrong " Bell " ??  I was looking at C J Bell a Cheshire based Trainer. ??

Thanks for cleaning that up anorak I was beginning to wonder myself ,back then Angus hill you to do the tissue for some independent bookmakers think he priced it up a bit bigger than it should have been.

Glasgow,

The Sedgefield win was on his UK debut after coming from Ireland. Both the newspaper archive (racecard and result), show him as trained by C J Bell, and that is also the information contained in the Chasers and Hurdlers annual for 1986/87.

The Chasers and Hurdlers for the following year report that he ran fourtimes for J G O'Shea before being moved to Mrs Jill Evans.

So either the owner moved him or he was sold after two runs for Bell.

The Racing Post have no pre 1988 info other than one liners for wins, and they always show the trainer that had the horse at the end of its career. So that's always wrong for horses that have changed stables. For example, check out the form for Barnbrook Again and it will tell you that Elsworth trained him to win four times over hurdles in 1984. But actually the horse was then with Stan Mellor and was only moved to Elsworth after an injury layoff.

Indeed it's a great thread and thank you TheAnorak, a great read.

Glasgow the racing post could be wrong.

Does anybody remember shu fly ?

..... NOT Chris Bell Trained . !!! ??  Racing post archives have Trained by Jill Evans.

Yes - the paper betting forecast had him at 5/2.

Think it must be snooker table although didn’t realise it was that short was that Chris bells anorak?

Whitwood is correct, but the year was 1990.!