TIMED OUT
FAQs
Karrotz ($KAZ)
(Current value £0.005)
Dan Skelton is expecting a “very, very tough” afternoon at Sandown on Saturday as he bids to fend off Willie Mullins in the final throws of a thrilling race to be crowned champion trainer.
Having led the way for much of the campaign, Skelton saw his lead at the top of the table significantly eroded at Aintree earlier this month after reigning champion Mullins claimed eight winners across three days and saddled five of the first seven home in the Randox Grand National.
A Mullins one-two in the following weekend’s Scottish Grand National was another major shot across the bows, but Skelton has continued to churn out winners to ensure he remains marginally in front ahead of an enthralling final day of the campaign.
“I’m pretty relaxed. We’ve had a great year, it’s been unbelievable,” he said.
“We set out at the start of the year to try to win between £3.3million and £3.4m in prize-money and we passed £3.3m on Wednesday night. I thought that would be enough to be champion trainer, but it’s a different time we live in now with Willie and his strength in depth.
“Ultimately Saturday is going to be very, very tough.”
Mullins reeled in Skelton last season to be become the first Irish-based trainer in 70 years after Vincent O’Brien to win the British title.
Skelton admitted prior to last month’s Cheltenham Festival that defeat would be harder to take this time around, but he has since accepted the Mullins machine is difficult to resist.
Speaking on a media call hosted by Great British Racing, he added: “Midway through the season somebody asked me how it would feel if I wasn’t champion trainer having had the lead through the whole season, and I said it would feel very different to last year.
“But actually, if I get beat this year, I won’t feel as disappointed as I presumed I would the week before Cheltenham because you can’t legislate for Willie taking £860,000 out of the Grand National.
“We had ourselves in a position where if he won it we were still OK and perhaps if he was only first and second we might still have been OK, but we find ourselves in this end-of-season struggle and we’re massively odds-on to get beat.
“It’s an unexpected situation, but it’s not one I’m overly frustrated with because at the end of the day, we made Willie raise his bar and his bar is quite high already.”
Prior to racing on Thursday, Skelton had trained 140 winners more than Mullins in Britain this season, but he added: “If we get beat, I don’t want any sympathy.
“We’ve had an unbelievable year and hopefully by the close of play on Saturday we’ll have won nearly £3.4m in prize-money and we’ll have had 180-odd winners, so I don’t want any sympathy at all and I don’t deserve any sympathy.
“I’ve run more horses than anybody and I want to beat this man (Mullins) on square terms. I don’t want the sympathy and to hear we needed a different set of circumstances to do so.
“If we get beat, we get beat with our chests out and our chins up. It might feel like you’re walking out to face your execution when you see all those runners, but I’m looking forward to it as we’re taking some good horses, we’re taking a lot of people to support us as they want to be there whether we win or lose because they’re with us the whole way.
“Willie is potentially beatable in a British championship because he doesn’t come over until later in the year. It’s obviously strange that an Irish trainer can basically play for the last two months of our season and win so much, it’s unprecedented, but that’s the way of it and we’ve got to do everything we can to try to resist that.
“I’ll be resisting it for the next three days and I’ll be resisting it for the next however many years it takes, because I will not give up.”
