John Ingles highlights the horses who contributed to Dan Skelton's first trainers' championship.
Grey Dawning achieved the highest Timeform rating, 165, among the horses who contributed to Dan Skelton becoming champion trainer for the first time. With his total earnings for the season just topping the £300,000 mark, it made sense that he also made the biggest individual contribution to his stable’s prize money total. Grey Dawning also won two of the stable’s four Grade 1 prizes during the campaign, starting with the Betfair Chase in which he turned the tables on Royale Pagaille who had beaten him into second the year before.
Grey Dawning was then only third of four when sent off favourite for the Cotswold Chase, while in the Cheltenham Gold Cup for which he started at 16/1 he weakened into fourth after still being in second two out. But fitted with cheekpieces and dropped back in trip, he took advantage of the less competitive nature of the Melling Chase at Aintree to register his other Grade 1 win.
Significantly, neither of the Grade 1s which Grey Dawning won were contested by any of Willie Mullins’ chasers. Mullins had no fewer than eight chasers in his yard rated higher than Grey Dawning, though the Betfair Chase isn’t a race he targets as a rule and, in contrast to the previous season, by the time Aintree came round, Mullins was concentrating on the fight to retain his Irish title rather than pull out all the stops to win the British one again.
With a rating of 148, the mare Panic Attack doesn’t rank among the season’s best chasers, but she was another big earner for her stable thanks mainly to her exploits in handicaps. She completed the rare double of the two most valuable pre-Christmas handicap chases, the Paddy Power Gold Cup and Coral Gold Cup, for combined prize money of more than £233,000, a double last achieved by Celestial Gold for Martin Pipe 21 years earlier. Panic Attack, who runs at Perth on Wednesday, was a leading fancy for the Grand National only to fall early on, though the stable had a four-timer on the rest of the card.
Panic Attack had formerly been with David Pipe, and another recruit to the yard was Thistle Ask who made remarkable progress through the handicapping ranks to be up with the best chasers in the stable on a rating of 163+. Bought for just £11,000 after his previous trainer James Ewart ceased training, Thistle Ask began the season winning at Kelso from a BHA mark of 115 and went on to complete a four-timer with wins in a premier handicap at Wetherby and the Grade 2 limited handicaps, the Haldon Gold Cup and Desert Orchid Chase. He then ran a cracker behind Jonbon in the Clarence House Chase before being put aside to take him on again in Saturday’s Celebration Chase at Sandown.
Eleven-year-old Protektorat has been a terrific stable servant and was winning for the seventh season in succession. His main target was the Fleur de Lys Chase at Windsor which he won for the second year running, though he also made the most of a simple task, after a jumping scare, in the listed Premier Chase at Kelso on the way to picking up second-place money in the Bowl Chase at Aintree won by Jango Baie.
Also primed to win what was doubtless his main target for the campaign was L’Eau du Sud, whose good record fresh helped him land the Shloer Chase at Cheltenham on his reappearance from a below-par Jonbon. L’Eau du Sud didn’t win again, but third places in the Tingle Creek and Champion Chase added to his prize money total.
In all, nine of Skelton’s horses during the season racked up earnings of more than £100,000 each. The only hurdler in the yard to do so was The New Lion, on 161 rated just a pound above the Relkeel Hurdle winner Kabral du Mathan. The New Lion couldn’t take full advantage of the misfortunes that struck the likes of State Man, Constitution Hill and Sir Gino, though he did win the International Hurdle in which Sir Gino was injured. The Fighting Fifth was certainly one that got away following Constitution Hill’s early exit, The New Lion falling two out himself, and a late error proved costly in the Aintree Hurdle too when runner-up to Brighterdaysahead who, along with Lossiemouth, had too much speed for him in the Champion Hurdle.
The list of the stable’s other six-figure winners is completed by Madara, who was laid out to win the Plate Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival for Panic Attack’s owner Bryan Drew, Calico, who won valuable two-mile handicap chases at Cheltenham and Ascot in the autumn, and another newcomer to the yard this season, Mirabad, who sprung a 50/1 surprise in the Maghull Novices’ Chase at Aintree.
The total prize money of these nine horses who each earned more than £100,000 comes to around £1.58m. A tidy sum, but it accounts for only around a third of the stable’s overall prize money this season. As Skelton has a lead of more than £2m to spare over Mullins in the final week, it means that, remarkably, he would still have been champion even without any of the contributions from all the big winners mentioned above.
That points to Skelton’s first championship being founded more on the week-in week-out efforts of what might be termed a ‘second tier’ of useful or smart performers rather than a deep squad of high-class Grade 1 performers.
That’s in contrast to the sort of firepower at Mullins’ disposal. In addition to his four Grade 1 wins this season, Skelton mopped up a dozen Grade 2 contests. That’s pretty much the opposite of Mullins’ record in graded events when he was champion in Britain last season. Concentrating on Cheltenham as usual, and then Aintree too once he could smell a second championship, Mullins finished up with 13 Grade 1 wins in Britain (seven at Cheltenham and five at Aintree) but only three at Grade 2 level.
It’s not just about win prize money either. Around £1.89m of Skelton’s earnings this season has come from place money alone – that’s a larger sum than either of Nicky Henderson’s or Paul Nicholls’ win-only totals. Mentioning the two trainers who have dominated the championship for most of the last twenty years, it’s worth noting that Skelton’s rise has coincided with neither Henderson nor Nicholls being quite the force they were. Both used to routinely send out over a hundred winners a season, but Henderson has failed to do for the last four seasons and Nicholls for the last two. Skelton, on the other hand, has Martin Pipe’s record of 243 winners in a season in his sights.
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