It's only November, but already the Dan Skelton champion trainer chat has begun. Is this finally his year?
If you could imagine a world where Willie Mullins doesn’t win the Grand National, with placed horses in behind, and a double handful of Cheltenham Festival races, you’d hand Dan Skelton his first trainer’s championship right now.
Every single year Skelton ups his game and gets even better and a first Paddy Power Gold Cup victory – where he trained both the first and third – is another significant signpost in his thriving training career.
It took his mentor Paul Nicholls 25 horses before he won the Paddy Power for the first time with Al Ferof in 2012, but Skelton’s two runners on Saturday were his ninth and 10th representatives, and on the back of Spiritofthegames and Protektorat finishing second in this race it had a certain air of inevitability about it.
The Skeltons are on fire, Panic Attack a third winner at the November Meeting for a team that had a day one double, including the brilliant L’eau Du Sud, and you just know when Willie Mullins is not in town then Dan Skelton will pick up the pieces.
With first home Panic Attack and third Hoe Joly Smoke winning the best part of £110,000 between them in the Paddy Power Skelton is over £400,000 ahead of nearest rival Olly Murphy already, but we all know it can be all change when Mullins assembles his troops in the spring.
Last year Skelton admitted himself he ran out of bullets to fire as the all-conquering Mullins monsters swept him aside in the closing stages of the campaign, but it could be different this time around.
He has assembled an even better team for starters. He’s got the Champion Hurdle favourite in The New Lion and has unearthed a bona fide Queen Mother Champion Chase contender in L’eau Du Sud, while his prowess in handicaps is undisputed.
He might well underline that once again with Mirabad in the Greatwood Hurdle on Sunday.
With last year’s above-average bumper squad turning into a formidable novice hurdling team, too, Skelton has got more bases covered than ever before and, while we say it every season, this really could be the year he finally becomes champion trainer.
Skelton is widely thought of as a brilliant target trainer. He is, but that’s not enough to fend off the might of Mullins. He needs strength in depth and serious Grade 1 ammunition, as well, and the signs are he’s building a team worthy of the champion trainer mantle.
He won’t entertain that yet, it means too much, even if Paddy Power are 2/5 about him finally winning it with Mullins 7/4. But if Mullins is somehow out of the first five at Aintree ask him again. That will likely mean the job is done.
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