IF you want to be the best, it makes sense to learn from the best. Dan Skelton has only ever had two bosses: his father, the Olympic gold medal-winning show jumper Nick Skelton, and 11-time champion trainer Paul Nicholls.

To say that the bar of his expectations was set high right from the start of his training career in 2013 is an understatement, but it is was a level which the ambitious 35-year-old was quickly able to meet. Two seasons in, he notched his first century, and in each of the last two National Hunt seasons he has recorded the highest tally of winners – a staggering 205 in 2018/19 – when finishing third in the table to Nicholls and Nicky Henderson.

Those two titans of the game have passed the last 15 championships between them like a rugby ball. Before long, they will need to be on the look-out for an interception from Skelton.

The latter’s ascension, while swift, has already undergone a seachange, and it is one which may well lead to him to his next obvious target of champion trainer.

While the winners soon came rolling in, what was lacking from Skelton’s Warwickshire stable were the top-class horses which he had seen at close quarters while working at Ditcheat in the glory days of Kauto Star and Denman.

He says of his time there, “It almost became the norm to be around those sort of horses. Then all of a sudden I started by myself and I was looking at the list of horses in my first year and thinking ‘this is a bit different’.

BOTTOM UP

“You’ve got to then think, ‘okay that approach isn’t going to work and we’re going to have to do something different here and build from the bottom up’. You’re not just gifted all those great horses from the start. You have to make one or two of them, you have to improve a lot of them and go a different route so the horse can win where he can.”

Skelton adds: “At the start it was a very steep learning curve and I was operating at a completely different level to Paul. It’s a great place to learn everything that you need to know, but the reality of the first couple of years [training] was that it was nothing like what I was used to.

“But I always felt that with the education I got at Paul’s that when the good horses came along hopefully they would thrive.”

That belief is borne out by this season’s results, which feature a notable upturn in the quality of races won and, though it is his name on the licence, the trainer is quick to attribute this success to ‘Team Skelton’.

His base, within swinging distance of Stratford and Warwick racecourses, is set across two yards in close proximity to his father’s home. The family ties do not end there, of course. The first and second stable jockeys are Skelton’s brother Harry and Harry’s wife, Bridget Andrews.

Four years older than Harry, Dan clearly views his brother as an equal, as well as a vital gauge as to the horses’ wellbeing, both on the gallops and at the races.

“I cannot over-emphasise the importance of it,” he says. “As a jockey you need to know the horses you are riding to get the extra couple of per cent. That’s all we’re dealing with to win or lose: a couple of per cent. And we’ve got that because Harry knows them all. He knows the owners, he knows how I think and I know how he thinks.

“We can work together and plan the best route with the horses. He and Bridget know them at home and when they go to the races they know what the horses will respond positively to and they know what their capabilities are.”

COMMITMENT

As if to underline his commitment to the stable, the younger Skelton agrees to be interviewed on a day when he has no race rides, but as we chat in mid-afternoon, it’s clear from the sound of hoofbeats that he is speaking directly from the saddle.

“We just want to do well,” says Harry of the family’s shared ambition. “That’s the main pressure. I don’t feel pressure from the owners or from Dan. We believe in each other and hopefully the owners believe in us.

“We want to do especially well because blood is thicker than water. I don’t want to let him down and I think he feels the same way about me. And Bridget and I both know we can speak our minds to Dan.”

Then there’s Skelton senior, one of the best horsemen Britain has even known, and a long-time fan of racing.

Dan says of his father, “He doesn’t get involved in the day-to-day running of the yard but he comes out to the gallops as often as he can. There will be the occasion that Dad will pick up the odd thing that we haven’t noticed. He’s good at keeping our standards high.”

While the brothers quickly proved their combined skill in the training and riding of a huge number of winners, both admit to having adjusted their sights to focus on quality over quantity.

This shift in emphasis was rewarded with a very happy Christmas, delivered not by Santa but primarily by Shan Blue’s strike in the Grade 1 Kauto Star Novices’ Chase and Nube Negra’s defeat of Altior in the Grade 2 Desert Orchid Chase. December had started particularly well for the team when Allmankind took his record over fences to two from two by winning the Grade 1 Henry VIII Novices’ Chase.

Dan Skelton admits that his greatest satisfaction is in bringing a young horse up through the ranks, as he did with his first Grade 1 winner – which fittingly came at the Cheltenham Festival in the OLBG Mares’ Hurdle with Roksana. The nine-year-old has been with him throughout her career and is being primed for a third appearance at Prestbury Park in March.

Shan Blue, a private purchase from Andrew Slattery after a four-year-old point-to-point win, has been in the Skelton stable for two years and, now seven, has blossomed this season. He lost little in defeat when collared near the line by Sporting John in the Grade 1 Scilly Isles’ Novices’ Chase at Sandown in February.

Nube Negra and Allmankind hail from less obvious roots for budding chasers, both having previously raced on the flat. Coincidentally they were both bred by show jumping contacts of the Skelton family, the latter by Bill and Tim Gredley.

“We actually sold Tim his first show jumper and I’ve known him for as long as he’s been show jumping,” says Dan. “Allmankind is remarkable really. I remember saying to Tim after we’d had him a few weeks ‘this could be a write-off’. He was charging around like a bullock and I just didn’t know what to expect.

“I knew that he would be fit when he ran and that he would jump, because he was afraid of nothing, so we thought we might just as well get on and run him.”

He continues: “I almost prefer him to have that little edge of lunacy. I don’t feel it’s a great sign at this stage in his career if he’s too quiet. I think he’s at his best when he’s just doing a little bit too much. At Cheltenham in the autumn he was a bit flat and behind the bridle and that’s not really the way he likes to race.”

EXUBERANCE

Harry Skelton, the man charged with harnessing the exuberance of Allmankind on race day has come to admire the horse’s mental strength as much as his obvious athletic ability.

He says: “From a jockey’s point of view you’re in for a bit of a hairy ride. When I went to Warwick on his debut I thought it could go one way or the other. But there’s no bottom to him. Three out, then two out he was still pulling, and I had a look round and he was about 30 lengths clear. He has an unbelievable mindset. It doesn’t matter what the ground is like, he just runs. He’s taken to fences really well and won a Grade 1 on his second start. It’s fantastic training by Dan.”

Nube Negra has deserted the sultry meetings of Madrid’s Hipodromo de la Zarzuela for an altogether more bracing English winter experience, but it is an environment in which he is clearly thriving. A rare National Hunt runner with a Spanish suffix, the seven-year-old was bred by former Olympic show jumper Luis Alvarez Cervera and raced seven times on the flat in Spain at two and three.

He too was the impressive winner of a juvenile hurdle on his jumping debut, but his trainer believes he is really now only coming to himself, despite those signs of precocity.

Nube Negra’s sire Dink, a son of the versatile Poliglote, won the Spanish Derby to earn himself a place at stud, initially in his native country and now at France’s Haras de la Bareliere.

“You cannot do it without the raw ingredients,” says Skelton. “We were very lucky to find Shan Blue. We were extraordinarily lucky to find Nube Negra. When you’re trying to create those horses so much needs to go right: you need them to be lucky, stay sound, mature. You need the races to fall into their seasons perfectly and you need not to make any mistakes like running them when they are not right.

“Those fellas at the top of the game almost make it look easy because they have a system in place, a system which makes sure you don’t make any mistakes with the ones who are good enough.”

DILEMMA

Nube Negra’s entry for the Queen Mother Champion Chase will leave his regular jockey with something of a dilemma. Harry Skelton enjoyed a Grade 1 double at Sandown on December 5th but only one of those was for his brother, on Allmankind. He landed the day’s feature race, the Tingle Creek, on Politologue for Paul Nicholls and John Hales, who also owned Nick Skelton’s outstanding show jumper Arko III. The partnership’s first outing was to victory in last year’s Champion Chase.

Harry says: “Politologue will always be a horse close to my heart. We have a great relationship with the Hales family and I was very lucky to be asked to ride him when Paul had two runners in the Champion Chase. He is a horse who just wants to please.”

In January Harry felt obliged to give up the ride on Politologue when it became apparaent the jockey would be staying loyal to Nube Negra at Cheltenham.

Inevitably thoughts turn to the Festival but Dan has been keen to appreciate success in other major races in their own right, rather than viewing them merely as stepping stones towards Cheltenham.

“I’m not disputing that Cheltenham is the most important thing. This year sadly it is going to be missing the appreciative crowd, the enthusiasts who love the horses, and I feel disappointed for them that they have not been able to enjoy going racing this year.

“The Festival is important for so many reasons, of course, but it’s blindingly obvious that the winners of big races en route are becoming undervalued when they shouldn’t be.

“Undervaluing the day-to-day achievements of horses, yards, owners is just going to alienate people. If you win the Arkle, that is the most important two-mile novice chase of the season, but it’s also pretty good to win the Henry VIII or the Irish Arkle. I think we need to be very respectful of other races and their sponsors. It’s almost like these big races outside Cheltenham are just tickets of validation towards your chances at the Festival. It’s like a barometer of how good you could be.”

His is a cry which will resonate with many fans of racing but there’s no need of a barometer when it comes to assessing the merit of Dan and Harry Skelton: in a short time they have already proved that they are top class. ?