Harry hits 100 mark for third season in a row

WARWICKSHIRE-based Dan and Harry Skelton look poised to post their best-ever scores with four months of the current campaign still to run, writes David Hucker.

A double at Fontwell Park on Monday saw trainer Dan Skelton move into 114 winners, just four short of last season’s best score of 118.

Numerically, Skelton is the leading trainer in the country but, with the championship decided on prize money, rather than winners, he has slipped to third place behind ten-times champion Paul Nicholls and Nigel Twiston-Davies.

Skelton has won £913,603 in prize money, winning with 24 per cent of his runners, but Nicholls, to whom he was assistant before striking out on his own, and Twiston-Davies have landed some big prizes in recent weeks and edged ahead, with Nicholls becoming the first to pass the £1m mark.

Brother Harry has ridden 101 winners in each of the last two seasons and the success of Get On The Yager was his 100th of the current campaign and number 512 in a career that has taken off since teaming up with Dan. He also began his career with Nicholls but, after a bright start, was struggling for winners, posting just eight victories in 2012/13.

Although riding for other trainers, most of his rides and all of his 100 winners have come for the Skelton yard, which has run 170 individual horses since the beginning of May, a sign of the growth and impact that the stable is making.