Dan Skelton feels his season-long mission to beat Martin Pipe's winners record is on track but may just be put on ice a little during next month.
Skelton set himself the target of beating Pipe's 243 winners in a single season after being crowned British Champion Jumps Trainer for the first time at the end of the 2025-26 campaign and, following a highly successful Summer Jumps Championship (backed by The Sun) which has seen Skelton rack up 86 winners already, he feels he is bang on course.
However, as thoughts turn to some of the higher-calibre 'winter' squad emerging over the coming weeks, Skelton feels the weather could play a part in impacting on some early-season planning.
"We've plotted a graph out and we're on track so that's good," he said. "My concern going forward is that we're not going to get much rain for October, so the fresh winter horses that are going to be ready to come out in October, it just worries me a little that they're going to be on standby.
"But I've maintained through the whole of this that we'll only do what's right for the horses anyway. So if we have to wait a little, then we have to wait a little."
Reflecting on a highly productive opening section of the season which began on April 26 earlier this year, Skelton said: "It's great to be part of that Summer Jumps Championship, I think it's a good initiative. It's something that we were obviously quite conscious of, that we were going to have plenty of summer runners. So it made sense to keep an eye on the table.
"All through the summer we've been trying to keep the show on the road as much as possible. We're trying to beat the record and every single one (winner) counts. It's been great fun, we've really enjoyed it."
Looking further ahead, Skelton has won two of the past four editions of the Betfair Chase at Haydock - the first Grade 1 event of the British National Hunt season - and he's perfectly happy where all the stable stars are in their early preparations, despite growing fears and contingency plans being discussed in the event of tracks not being able to hold certain meetings over the next few weeks through lack of rain.
"The Grade 1s in the UK don't start until the middle of November, so we're not pressing buttons," he said. "We're not even touching the sides with them (best horses) to be honest.
"A few of the novices are going to be ready end of the October, early-November because they need to get some experience, but I'm very relaxed about the winter team, they're in a good spot; right where we want them in terms of fitness and health. We have to maintain that but we just need the rain. Once we get the rain, we can start thinking about it."
The fast start to the season has seen Harry Skelton, who claimed the champion jockey title in 2020-21, pick up a 24-winner lead over current champion Sean Bowen, but older brother Dan isn't getting too carried away at this stage.
"It's definitely on the agenda and if we were going to take beating Martin Pipe's record seriously, then it was going to be something that would maybe fit hand-in-glove, but we're not counting any chickens before they hatch here," said the trainer.
"There's a long, long way to go. The early priority was to make sure the summer horses did a good May to September stint and then see what goes on after that. But, like I say, October could just be problematic."
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