Dan Skelton has spoken of his excitement at landing the 435,000 guineas top lot at the Tattersalls Cheltenham Sale this week.
The champion trainer saw off Willie Mullins and Harold Kirk to Mifa d’Airy, a daughter of Masked Marvel who was an impressive winner of a point-to-point at Dromahane prior to going through the sales ring.
Speaking on Friday’s Nick Luck Daily Podcast, he said: “She’s beautiful, a very elegant filly. We actually saw her as a store and she was just a bit tubby and possibly didn’t quite show herself off as well as a store as she was the other day, but that’s time and all horses need a bit of time.
“She was a beautiful store if not quite what we were looking for at the time, but she has matured and is such a beautiful horse and moves exceptionally well and her performance was very, very taking.
“We had to see off Willie and he’s buying horses like this quite regularly and when I glanced across and saw the euro conversion on the screen it was close to 500,000 euros which is amazingly what kind of two, three, or four a week sell for in France.
“That’s Willie’s patch and he obviously felt she was in that category as well and you can’t say we were happy with her price, it’s an awful lot of money, but we were happy with the quality we were able to secure."
Skelton is ready to run a host of established stars at Sandown next week too as he closes in on another remarkable milestone, £5million in prize-money for the season.
“I think we’ve got a nice hand today and tomorrow at Ayr," he said on Friday. "We’ve only got two runners today but have a nice runner in the big race, especially, while we have one that can win in the handicap hurdle but has been a bit of rascal and we haven’t got the best out of him yet.
“Tomorrow we have five with good chances including the favourite in the Scottish Champion Hurdle. Unfortunately we don’t have a runner in the Scottish National, it’s one area we seem to be not quite able to fill up with, that really long-distance chasing division, but we’re working hard to fill that.
“Next week Panic Attack is going to run at Sandown. She obviously only got as far as the third at Aintree and then got into a catching bay at the fourth fence, so she only did six furlongs last week in the National.
“Kabral Du Mathan is going to run in the Select Hurdle, Thistle Ask and probably Mirabad are probably going to run in the Celebration Chase and a few others on the card too.”
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