Protektorat takes flight as the Skeltons win again in the Ryanair Chase
Protektorat proved dropping back in trip was no issue when producing a brilliant display to claim the Ryanair Chase for the red-hot Dan Skelton team at the Cheltenham Festival.
If ever a trainer looked destined to achieve success then Dan Skelton would be odds-on favourite.
The son of Olympic gold medal winner Nick Skelton, who has been at the top of the showjumping world for decades, Skelton has been around horses all his life.
His training career was founded upon both that equine-immersed upbringing and a nine-year association with Paul Nicholls and his team at Ditcheat.
As of 2024, Skelton has trained ten Cheltenham winners, which include three Grade One races.
Ambitious, articulate, affable and with so much equine nous, it was no surprise when, in 2013, Skelton left Ditcheat with the blessing of Nicholls to pursue his own career as a trainer.
In a relatively short time that has proved to be a masterstroke as, from his Warwickshire base, he has gone on to bite the hand of the man that once fed him and plenty of others besides.
Hitting the century mark for winners trained in a season for the first time in the 2015-16 campaign, he has now achieved that feat on six successive occasions.
By far and away his best to date was the astonishing 205 he sent out to win in the 2018/19 season, when his string amassed a total of £2,301,457 in prize money. He was only the second trainer, after that great record breaker Martin Pipe, to have achieved such a feat.
It is no surprise that such stats saw the Alcester-based handler reach 1,000 winners in very quick time, celebrating the feat in just his ninth season when Faivoir triumphed in the Windsor Horse Rangers Novices' Limited Handicap Chase at Ascot in November 2021.
Although Skelton has yet to find a major champion of his own within the yard, it seems a matter of when, not if, he will achieve such success in his own right.
He already has ten Cheltenham Festival winners to his name, four of them in the County Hurdle (Superb Story, 2016; Mohaayed, 2018, Ch'tibello, 2019 and Faivoir, 2023).
Skelton landed his first Cheltenham Grade 1 in 2019 in the Mares' Hurdle with Roksana.
But it was the 2024 Cheltenham Festival where Skelton made a dent in the Willie Mullins procession. He scored with a career-best four winners including Grey Dawning in the Turners Novices' Chase and Protektorat in the Ryanair Chase.
Dan's partnership with younger brother and now top jockey Harry Skelton, who passed his own 1,000 winner landmark a month earlier than his sibling, looks set to blossom and flourish in the years ahead.
Protektorat proved dropping back in trip was no issue when producing a brilliant display to claim the Ryanair Chase for the red-hot Dan Skelton team at the Cheltenham Festival.
Fresh from landing a tasty 25/1 winner with Monmiral on Thursday, our red-hot trends tipster Andrew of Fiosrach looks to round the week off with another tasty winner in this wide-open handicap hurdle.
Grey Dawning continued Dan Skelton’s fabulous Cheltenham Festival with a brilliant victory in the Turners Novices’ Chase.
The Irish will bring high hopes to Cheltenham on unofficial St Patrick’s Day, kicking off with what should be a thrilling Turners Novices’ Chase to get day three up and running.
Langer Dan retained his title for Dan and Harry Skelton in the Coral Cup Handicap Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, which was only the second winner for a British trainer out of a possible 10.
While most eyes are already turning towards the Cheltenham Festival, Monday’s card at Taunton looks decent enough to serve as a perfect warm-up act for the main events later in the week.
Planet Sport bet racing ambassador Harry Cobden has a busy Saturday ahead at Sandown, and is strongly fancied to add to his tally of winners in this competitive handicap chase.