Can Dan Skelton possibly repeat or even better last year's Cheltenham Festival haul of four winners? Our Ben Linfoot visited his yard to get the latest on his team.
New territory for Skelton
“He only runs fast when there’s a Guinness Village to go past,” Dan Skelton jokes as he tries to explain the remarkable healing powers that the Cheltenham Festival seems to have on his enigmatic Langer Dan. “This year has been disastrous and he has been terrible. He is impossible to train. We go to the Stayers’ Hurdle on trust.”
But we are not here for Langer Dan, not really. Skelton holds court, hands in pockets, jeans and gilet, hair flickering in the Friday morning wind, very much enjoying the fact that he has bigger fish to fry than his hat-trick seeking Festival specialist.
We are just over a fortnight away from the 2025 Cheltenham Festival and there is no sharp intake of breath when he claims this is the best team he has ever taken to the hallowed turf at Prestbury Park. Of course it is. There’s The New Lion, L’Eau Du Sud, Protektorat, Be Aware, Catch Him Derry, Take No Chances. It’s a squad that should contain winners.
Skelton knows it. “The hard thing now is the position we’re in, we have to have a winner because if we don’t you guys [the media] will say ‘they didn’t have a winner and they should have’, because realistically we should. We’re one of the bigger teams and we should.
“It’s new territory for us and that new reality that failure can be measured. Before when you’re only starting and you’re coming up through the ranks it’s your successes that are measured not your failures. Now when you get further up your failures get measured more than your successes!”
The 39-year-old has been plunged into this particular spotlight on the back of years of hard graft, his success at last year’s Festival a coming-of-age week that arrived during a period of struggle for British jumps trainers. Last year Skelton had four Festival winners thanks to Langer Dan, Unexpected Party, Grey Dawning and Protektorat, but his compatriots were not so fortunate.
Kim Bailey, Fiona Needham, Paul Nicholls, Ben Pauling and Jeremy Scott were next best with one winner apiece, but the rest, including Nicky Henderson, Philip Hobbs, Fergal O’Brien, Joe Tizzard, Nigel Twiston-Davies and Venetia Williams returned with no score.
“It’s frightening to say that it’s better, isn’t it?” Skelton says, pondering this year’s team with last year’s winning hand in mind. “But you can’t just say that because it’s better then you’re going to have five winners because you had four last year. That’s just highly presumptuous – you can’t do that. I never thought we’d have four winners last year and I was rude enough to think that our best chance [L’Eau Du Sud in the County Hurdle] was on the Friday and we got beat. We had four going into Friday and I thought we were definitely having five, but that’s our sport and that’s how it is.”
Taking on the Mullins monsters
The New Lion is the apple of his eye. Unbeaten in four, second favourite for the Turners Novices’ Hurdle, running in the green and gold colours of legendary owner JP McManus, he is the appointed ‘best chance of the meeting’ with talk of the Challow curse shrugged off. “Someone has to break it,” Skelton says.
He has to take on a Willie Mullins monster in Final Demand and that, of course, is a theme. Out trots L’Eau Du Sud, a striking grey, newspaper shavings from his bedding being scattered about the yard by his swaying tail. He takes on another Closutton big gun, Majborough, in the My Pension Expert Arkle Challenge Trophy, and Skelton fancies getting the better of this dust-up. You can just tell.
“I have a lot of respect for Majborough, but I really like this horse. I don’t want to go and say I think he’ll win but I think he’ll make it look closer than the prices suggest. He is versatile, has course form, lots of experience and is riding the crest of a wave – there is not much about him I don’t like. I have a lot of faith in my horse.”
Mullins. He keeps on being mentioned. Skelton clearly looks up to the dominant Irish Champion Trainer, a man who has 103 Cheltenham Festival wins to his name. The respect is there and Mullins’ extraordinary achievements are driving Skelton’s own ambitions. The sourcing of horses creeps into the discussion.
“What sets Willie apart is talent – his talent and that of his horses. We can all get them fit and Willie’s are super, super-fit. But it is going to be so hard to surpass Willie while he has the flow of talent that he has.
“What we have taken from that is that we need to make our own relationships and purchases from a supply chain – we can’t go to his and say ‘excuse me, Francois, can we give you £50,000 more than monsieur Mullins?’ It doesn’t work like that.
“He’s got his supply chain and we need to make our own - that’s what we’re doing and I think that’s reaping the rewards. You can’t do that over a month or two years or five years – it’s over lifetimes that you build those connections and that’s what you’re starting to see now.”
Further County bounty?
Skelton’s rise to the top of the British jumps trainers’ championship, which is where he is right now, currently £600,000 clear of his nearest rival, old mentor and 14-time champion Paul Nicholls, has been relatively quick without being rapid.
As you go into Lodge Hill, one of the two Skelton yards, the Willow’s Saviour barn looms immediately to your right, housing several of the team’s big guns. Named after his first big winner, Willow’s Saviour won The Ladbroke Handicap Hurdle at Ascot in the December of 2013, amidst Skelton’s debut season, the £85,000 winner’s cheque his first major haul.
It took him another five years to receive a winner’s prize that big. Mohaayed, in the same race. Now gaining a reputation as a handicap hurdle king, it was no surprise Skelton’s first Festival winner came in the County Hurdle, a race he has now won four times.
So you take notice when he visibly perks up at the mention of this year’s big hope for the race, Valgrand. “It’s all started to come together,” he says. “We are starting to believe it. He is a fresh horse. If you look at our previous County Hurdle winners, most hadn’t run very recently. I’d say he would shape up equally to our previous County Hurdle winners.”
But his charge for the champion trainer title has been powered by big guns. Grade Ones and Twos. The New Lion snagging £56,000 in the Challow, L’Eau Du Sud £56,000 in the Henry VIII and the yard’s big money-spinner, Protektorat, who took his career earnings to over £830,000 when he bagged another £86k payday in the Fleur De Lys Chase at Windsor last month.
The biggest earner for Skelton by a long way, Protektorat clearly holds a special place in his heart. A giant picture hangs proudly at the top of the Willow’s Saviour barn; Protekorat absolutely winging the third last at Carlisle on his chasing debut in 2020.
“We are very, very lucky to have Protektorat," Skelton says of last year's Ryanair Chase winner. "Not only is his talent what it is but his resolution and his desire are absolutely top quality. I think that is what gives him the ability to run so well in these races and why he has got the longevity he has.
“If he has any more to give, he’ll be giving it in three weeks’ time [in the Ryanair again]. He has never been this well and is a credit to himself and everyone around him to have had him in this shape for so long.”
More talk
There is talk of getting the job done in the trainer’s title race: “We’ve just got to keep the ball rolling. If we have an average March and April that’s apparently good enough.”
There is talk of the Skelton system and a positive attitude within the yard: “I joke around talking about the weakness of Protektorat’s opposition, we joke about that but there’s a conscious positive message in all those types of things that rub off on your staff, your owners and your team.”
There is talk of Be Aware being his best handicap chance in the Coral Cup, that Pertemps hopeful Catch Him Derry was ‘not that fit’ when beaten at Cheltenham two starts ago and that the mare Panic Attack will ‘be a player’ in the Plate Handicap Chase.
There is all that talk, but on this grey February morning, as the barren oak trees guide your eyes to the top of the Skelton gallops at his Alcester establishment, the final words have to go to Langer Dan.
“His form’s been awful and the training has been little better. He’s a funny character.”
Langer Dan might well need the mysterious powers of the Guinness Village or the spring climate to have the desired effect once more, although the Stayers' Hurdle division is a weak one...
Still, several stablemates will tackle the famous hill carrying much more expectation for a yard who conquered the Cheltenham Festival last year. Now the challenge is to do it all over again.
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