CALL ME DAN DARE
Leader Skelton relishing title tussle with Nicholls
DAN SKELTON is relishing a battle for the trainers’ championship after a brilliant Cheltenham Festival saw him edge his old boss Paul Nicholls out of pole position.
On the back of winning Sandown’s Imperial Cup on the eve of the Festival, Skelton landed four winners Cheltenham — Protektorat (Ryanair Chase), Grey Dawning (Turners Novices’ Chase), Langer Dan (Coral Cup) and Unexpected Party (Trustatrader Plate Handicap Chase) — and had a second place with L’Eau Du Sud in the County Hurdle.
Nicholls won the Pertemps Hurdle with Monmiral but the results saw Skelton turn around a £380,000 deficit into a £14,000 lead.
They swapped winners yesterday — three for Skelton and two for Nicholls — with Skelton extending his advantage in a battle that runs until April 27 by a further £50,000.
Yesterday, Skelton said all his main Cheltenham performers will run again at either Aintree’s Grand National meeting or Ayr’s Scottish National fixtures next month as he tries to deny reigning champion Nicholls a 15th title which would equal Martin Pipe’s record.
Skelton said: ‘It is a privilege to be in this position. I don’t see it as daunting. I know what Paul is like and this title will have to be earned if it is going to happen — he won’t give it away.
‘Every horse bar Royal Infantry (eighth in the Festival Bumper) will hopefully turn up at Aintree or Ayr or where appropriate. We gave the horses quite an easy start to the season and hoped it would work out positively for us.
‘I wouldn’t say we hoped what happened last week would happen because that would be too bold a comment, but we hoped we would have a good spring.’
Neither Skelton nor Nicholls look like they will have a runner in the Grand National itself.
That leaves a chance that Willie Mullins could also be in the mix after his great week with nine Festival wins, but he would have to win the big Aintree race.
Six times this century Skelton’s four wins would have been enough to make him the Festival’s leading trainer but Mullins has moved the scales. Suggestions that British trainers lack the competitive spirit to crack the Mullins domination irks Skelton.
He added: ‘I compete in British racing and I haven’t met someone who doesn’t want to win yet. There is all this Britain versus Ireland thing but last week highlighted it is everyone versus Willie.’
But another Festival of Irish domination yesterday prompted a bleak admission from BHA chief executive Julie Harrington, who said: ‘Put simply, the rate of decline of Jump racing in Britain at the top end has outstripped the measures that have been put in place to tackle it. We must do more, more quickly, and in a more coordinated and decisive manner if we are going to restore British Jump racing to the standing at which it belongs.’
Skelton believes the way forward has to be working even closer with the participants who are best placed to identify solutions.
He said: ‘I have a lot of respect for what the authorities do — it is not an easy task with racing politics — but none of them can train horses as well as the trainers or ride better than the jockeys.
‘I don’t mean sending around a questionnaire but direct input. You will get the voice of people who are competing more helping to change the sport.
‘If you had six monthly reviews with the key players we’d be in a stronger position. That is effectively what happened in Ireland.
‘The key players came together and asked how could they change things. They shrunk the fixtures and premierised their meetings to get a clear concise build up to where they are going.’
Meanwhile, jockey Jordan Nailor landed his biggest win so far on Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained Beauport in the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter. The 18-1 shot beat Mullins-trained Mr Incredible by a length and three-quarters.