Dan Skelton has been an immovable object at the top of the National Hunt trainers’ table since the opening day of the 2024-25 season on 4 May last year but when he comes up against the irresistible force of Willie Mullins’s stable at Sandown on Saturday, the betting market sees only one winner.
Mullins is top-priced at 1-6 to retain the title he won for the first time last year, and while stranger things happen in racing on a fairly regular basis – a 1-9 shot was beaten in a two-horse race at Fakenham less than a month ago – even Skelton has seemed slightly resigned to his probable fate in the run-up to this weekend’s decisive card.
“We have never been champion and have never been to that dance,” Skelton said. “The excitement that we could still do it and the tenacity everyone has shown is something I have taken a lot of heart from. We are trying to get through the door and on the dancefloor, maybe the bouncer won’t let us to the party on Saturday but we’ll try.”
Mullins is actually still around £67,000 adrift of Skelton’s prize money total ahead of Saturday’s card, which has a total prize fund of nearly £700,000, but he has 21 declared runners compared to Skelton’s nine, and 10 of the 20 runners in the £175,000 Bet365 Gold Cup, the feature race of the afternoon, including the first four in the betting.
The general sense of inevitability about a successful title defence, though, should not be allowed to diminish a full appreciation of the scale of Mullins’s likely achievement this weekend. He has made such a regular habit of doing things that were previously seen as near-impossible that a second straight title success – after becoming the first Irish trainer for 70 years to win – could almost be seen as par for the course.
Since he has assembled the most powerful team of horses that jump racing has ever seen, the argument also runs that, as one columnist in the Racing Post suggested this week: “The battle for supremacy in the training ranks in Britain is a phoney war until the spring and Mullins can pretty much win it whenever he wants.”
But defending a title in any sport is rarely that simple, and rarely, if ever, achieved by standing still.
Patrick Mullins, the trainer’s son and assistant, talked after his success on Nick Rockett in the Grand National about his father’s relentless ambition and desire to improve, at an age – 69 in September – when most of us would expect to be several years into retirement. And Skelton has forced Mullins to improve to remain in contention for this year’s championship, having already a personal target of £3.3m for the season, which he felt would be enough to secure a first title after finishing more than £300,000 adrift of Mullins last year.
In the end, though, and despite Skelton having saddled 1,000 runners over the course of the campaign, it all came down to one race: the Grand National three weeks ago, when Mullins saddled the first three home and five of the first seven. Even Mullins himself could scarcely believe that a six-strong team in a field of 34 runners would secure nearly 90% of the £1m prize fund, and Skelton certainly did not see it coming.
“You can’t legislate for Willie taking £860,000 out of the Grand National,” Skelton said this week. “We were in the position that if he won it we would still be OK, and even if he had first and second, but we are now in this end of season struggle and massively odds on to get beat.”
Even Mullins is not going to repeat his recent Aintree heroics every year, though, and Skelton’s ever-improving stable will surely get its hands on the prize one day. For the moment, though, it remains Willie’s world, and the scale of Mullins’s achievement if the title remains in County Carlow should not be underestimated.
The market has taken the presence of Paul Townend aboard the lightly-raced High Class Hero as a clear sign that he is Mullins main hope in Saturday’s feature at Sandown. The betting, though, often over-reacts in situations like these andMinella Cocooner (4.10), last year’s winner off a 4lb lower mark, could be a better bet at around 7-1 after an encouraging run to finish seventh in the Grand National three weeks ago.
Danny Mullins, who was aboard last year, has notched dozens of big-race wins for the yard on supposed second-strings, and Minella Cocooner proved last year that he can hold his form on spring ground, having won this race just over three weeks after finishing third in the Irish Grand National.
Sandown: 1.50Riskinthegroundhas chipped in £66,000 for Dan Skelton’s title charge in the last fortnight and is clearly thriving, so a quick hat-trick – worth another £21,000 – is a distinct possibility.
Leicester 2.0:5Having been gelded over the winter,Completely Randomimproved to win last time out and can follow up here.
Sandown 2.25:Last year’s Arkle winner,Gaelic Warrior,was back to his best at Aintree last time and will be a warm favourite to pick up the £45,000 first prize.
Haydock 2.40:Myalis 2-2 over this course and distance and will appreciate the drop back to seven furlongs after a promising return over a mile.
Sandown 3.00: Mullins relies onKitzbuhel,in his first season with the yard and still on an upward curve, to regain the winning thread after a drop in trip.
Sandown 3.35:Hard to see anything but a third straight win in this race for Nicky Henderson’s classy and ultra-consistentJonbon.
Sandown4.45:Last year’s winner,Ike Sport,looks primed for a repeat off a 4lb higher mark.
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