“Well done. I surrender.”
Twelve months on from uttering those words and offering an outstretched hand of congratulations to Willie Mullins in this very same Sandown winners’ enclosure, Dan Skelton holds a trophy aloft. He’s champion trainer for the first time.
There’s a sense of inevitability about this moment, after all the dethroned champ had only run him down on the final day of the last two campaigns.
We told him at the time. 'Wait until Willie doesn’t win the National and it’s yours Dan'.
But Willie did win the National. And the Champion Hurdle, and the Champion Chase and the Gold Cup.
Five other Cheltenham Festival races too. But he couldn’t land a blow this year.
Earlier this week John Ingles charted how the 2025/2026 title was won. In a nutshell, by plundering the big autumn and winter pots and via sheer weight of numbers.
There’s increased quality too.
From November 1st to December 31st 2024, Skelton sent out 45 winners but only four at Graded level. During that period there were ten performances from his team worthy of a Timeform rating of 140-plus.
In 2025, there were 56 winners; 18 came via 140-plus displays and big days in the sun, or wind and rain, for Panic Attack (twice), Thistle Ask (twice), Grey Dawning, L’Eeu Du Sud and Fortune De Mer.
And while Mullins and his team battled the County Carlow rain and a rare quiet spell, the gleaming silver trophy he used as a home for his Lindor chocolates, was slipping away.
But it wasn’t all about the first few months of the campaign.
"Sometimes I set myself silly or ridiculous targets but it’s a motivator for me and I’ve also found out that it’s a motivator for those around me too."
Because this year the domestic domination was complete.
Heltenham’s victory at Perth on Tuesday completed a clean-sweep of wins at every jumps track in the UK this campaign. Doyen Quest's victory at Sandown on Saturday carried him past the £5million barrier.
We’re breathing rarefied air here, achievements that for some would be career-defining.
But the quote says it all. Skelton is a ball of ambition, he talks the talk and walks the walk.
There’s no danger of him shedding the salt tears that rolled down Alexander The Great’s cheeks after he cast his eyes over his own conquered worlds.
This motivation to drive ever higher comes from within.
Given a clean run health-wise with his string, keeping that particular black dog from the door, no-one in the UK has the ammunition to lay siege to the castle.
Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson will continue to get their hands on good horses, Ben Pauling too. Olly Murphy will hit big numbers, but there’s big and there's big, while Jamie Snowden, Harry Derham and countless others will be looking to build on their current momentum.
None of those are the face Skelton sees when he opens his eyes on a morning.
"You’ve got to win in here before you win out there."
Said the newly-crowned champion after fending off Mullins’ Chief Purchasing Officer Harold Kirk to snare the top lot at the Tattersalls Cheltenham April Sale.
It took a bid of £435,000 to persuade the Closutton team to cry ‘no mas’ and allow Mifa D’Airy to board a horsebox bound for Alcester instead of the ferry back home with them.
The Masked Marvel mare was an impressive winner of a point-to-point for Sean Doyle and Skelton wanted her. He assembled his team, led by owner Rachel Wilson, and snared his prize.
And he has increased spending power. Lindy and Mark O'Hare are on board, billionaires, 92nd on the Sunday Times Rich List and the new owners of Mets Ta Ceinture and Merci Mam who cost 1.23million euros between them at Arqana in the autumn.
Not every battle is fought in the public domain. Skelton is now in there pitching with Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Henry De Bromhead and the rest for the best of the talent in Ireland and France who often change hands for eye-watering sums over the phone rather than following the thump of an auctioneer’s hammer.
If you can’t beat them, join them.
But it’s not easy to break through at this level and for all the fresh investment, potential spending power at his disposal, it’s Mullins who has the established superpower owners within.
Yes JP McManus has The New Lion with the new champ, but County Carlow is the port of call for the vast majority of his major new purchases. Jim and Marie Donnelly are there, Susannah and Rich Ricci too.
There’s Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, Kenny Alexander, Gigginstown, the Turleys. Mullins continues to have that crucial knack of winning big races for each and every one of them. Big people, big personalities, used to having success and doing things their own way, yet happy to be a part of this winning team.
Well-established connections in France continue to pay dividends, Kirk and Pierre Boulard are busy 12 months of the year. The title may have gone but not the ambition to continue to rule as none has ever done before.
"I'll try to aim for £4m in prize-money again, because that feels like a good defensive number for a championship.
"It means the likes of Willie have to go to a place they haven't gone before – I find myself here because he pushed us into that position.
"We had to set something that was above what he'd done, because if not, I'd have just been a follow-up all my life."
And we roll on to 2026/2027. £4million is the safe number. Willie won’t get there, he won’t change his modus operandi.
His horses are trained to peak in the spring, there’s no interest in trying to ready some of the A-listers for the big British pots of the autumn and winter. That’s not how he works.
It’s why six or seven of the star chasers will face off against each other in the John Durkan rather than one or two being peeled away for a Betfair Chase tilt. He has his programmes.
Mullins really enjoyed being champion trainer in Britain, he relished the thrill of the chase after scenting blood in the immediate aftermath of the the 2024 and 2025 Grand Nationals.
But a six-week champion is all he’ll ever be. If Skelton can monopolise the big pots of the autumn and winter with such regularity again, he’ll always be too far ahead whatever the Irish genius can conjure up at Cheltenham and Aintree.
That’s a fact. And the British trainer has no peers when it comes to target training, precision strikes with his horses, maximising their returns.
For the dethroned king, in the UK at least, it’s about quality and the very big days.
Would Willie swap his Gold Cup, Champion Chase, Champion Hurdle and Grand National victories for a third British title on Saturday? Not a chance in a hell.
Would Skelton swap the clean-sweep of tracks, passing £5million and driving the trophy back home with him for the first time for those four victories? Absolutely not.
But maybe we need to ask him that question again in the three years' time.
"I’d love to try to match his grip I suppose. It’s going to be very hard to do but is something we’re going to keep aiming for. I came away last year after being beaten by Willie and though to myself, ‘if this is where the bar is, then we’ve got to go past it’.
"If that’s how high the bar is then that’s where we’re going. I’ll get my teeth into that. I’m almost better being pushed.
"I’ve said before when you get to the top then you’re the front-runner, and it’s unbelievably hard to do that but Willie has almost revolutionised that spot because he's taken it to levels you didn’t even know were possible and to places you didn’t know existed.
"We’ve had the benefit of being able to watch him and see what’s going on but now we’ve got to stand on our own two feet and even go beyond perhaps."
And laid bare right there, in a Luck On Sunday interview, is the ambition of Skelton and also the challenge he faces. He’s not going to be a one-time champion. We all know that. But from the top of the tallest mountain In Britain, his sights are already set on other, more daunting summits.
What Mullins has achieved in recent years is surely an impossible act to follow.
A ridiculous 120 Cheltenham Festival winners and counting, three successive Grand National victories, titles on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Records tumbling at all the major festivals, momentum everywhere you look.
But his British rival isn’t intimidated by those achievements. He’s motivated by them. And if you’re Dan Skelton why wouldn’t you be? He’s thinking big.
On reflection we don’t need to ask him in three years’ time whether he’d rather be champion trainer or win the all the major pots at the big meetings.
He wants both. It looks like Mission Impossible right now, but to have someone in the UK even dreaming that dream? Now that's refreshing.
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