When the two great influences of your life are a father with an Olympic gold medal and an employer who has been champion trainer eight times, success is as much an expectation as an ambition. Fortunately for his equilibrium, Dan Skelton sees only the positives in this and most of life’s challenges.
True, he started with certain advantages. Nine years of mentoring by Paul Nicholls and the moral and financial backing of his showjumping father, Nick, provided a launch-pad of which others could only dream. His stables are state-of-the-art and the family bond extends to his younger brother Harry, riding with a previously unsuspected elan.
Opportunity and implementation are two entirely different things, though. Skelton, 30, has progressed so fast that it is doubtful if any new trainer has ever made such an instant impact.
In just his second season, this engaging, ebullient character is on the fringes of the championship’s top ten. His three purpose-built barns in the Warwickshire hamlet of Shelfield Green are full with 84 horses and he will field six runners at the Cheltenham Festival this week, only one of them remotely speculative.
“A lot of people get drawn into running horses that perhaps shouldn’t be there,” he said. “I don’t want to do that. I love competing. I like running the horses and we don’t mind travelling. Cheltenham is different, though. We’ve not been around long, so I’m feeling no pressure to win there. My pressure, this year, is just to get noticed.”
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Most would feel he has done that already. When this season began, Skelton privately set himself a target of 52 winners and £520,000 prize money — one winner and £10,000 for each week of term. He is almost past the post on both counts, with the biggest seven weeks still to come.
True to character, Skelton shows no complacency. “I still see ten people ahead of me in the table,” he said. “I don’t suddenly expect to beat them. I’m realistic about success. I know how hard it is to get up there and stay there. But it’s what I’m aiming for.”
Inevitably, there have been bumps along the way. This time last year, Skelton had gone two months without a winner and was showing the strain. “Your confidence ebbs away and you start questioning yourself,” he said. “But to guard against it happening again in the heavy ground of winter, we put in a circular canter of soft sand.”
As this season reached its midway point, he faced a different problem, one of coping with the speed of growth. “It started to get too much,” he admitted. “I was working all hours, never off the phone, and I needed to let the steam out.”
His answer was delegation, recruiting Lucinda Gould, who cared for Denman in her time with Nicholls, to deal with modern communication. “She videos all the gallops and sends clips to owners, keeps the website updated and generally makes life easier for me,” he said.
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Skelton admits to learning “almost everything” from his nine years at Ditcheat, his first job on leaving school. “If every football league in the world is judged by the team at the top, our league is led by a monster,” he said admiringly. “Paul has no intention of backing down or slowing up.
“I know how he works and I know the improvement he can get out of horses. People are astonished by the change in Mr Mole but it’s only what Paul would expect of himself. He’ll just be disappointed it’s taken this long. I do see him as a rival but I pick my times to take him on.”
His more realistic rivals are perceived as the rest of the new generation — men like Harry Fry, his former colleague under Nicholls, Warren Greatrex, Ben Pauling and Charlie Longsdon. All still await their first Festival winner.
“I enjoy seeing them do well and I’m genuinely sad when things go wrong for them — I was gutted for Harry having to rule out two of his Cheltenham runners. But at the end of the day, I want to beat them. I’m a competitor.”
So nakedly competitive, indeed, that Skelton has been on the wrong end of racing’s insidious whispering campaigns. To make him indignant, one needs only to mention the idle gossip that he covets other people’s owners by offering to train horses at cut price.
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“I know what people say and it’s nonsense,” he said. “I’ve never asked anyone to send me a horse and I never will. I’ve also never said I will reduce my fees for anyone — it’s madness. Perception can be tinted by many different emotions, like jealousy and greed, but I don’t dwell on the negatives. I can sleep at night knowing I’d never do that.”
Skelton will field a runner in the Stan James Champion Hurdle tomorrow but his realistic prospects come later in the meeting. Zarib is strongly fancied for the Fred Winter Juvenile Hurdle, Shelford has a clear chance in the Coral Cup and Value At Risk, the one horse who induces fearful nerves in his trainer, is the best British hope in the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle.
Already, though, Skelton is looking ahead to a time when horses like Value At Risk and Three Musketeers jump fences and when Willow’s Saviour, his first flagship horse, returns from injury. “I think we’ll have a very good team for next season,” he said, sounding ever more like his mentor.
SKELTON’S SIX
Bertimont (Champion Hurdle). “We don’t expect to win but he’s good enough to pick up prize money.”
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What A Warrior (Ultima Business Solutions Handicap Chase). “Good ground is important to him.”
Shelford (Coral Cup). “He will wear cheekpieces and he’s working better than he has ever done.”
Zarib (Fred Winter Juvenile). “Our best chance. The speed track on the inside will suit him.”
Value At Risk (Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle). “I was upset when he got beaten but I’ve learnt plenty.”
Bellenos (Grand Annual Chase). “He’s had a wind operation, he’s fresh and has a chance.”
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Footage courtesy of Racing UK