If you feel like you’ve heard the name ‘Skelton’ before in relation to horse racing, then you’d be absolutely correct. Although Dan Skelton is a well-known trainer, his brother is the Champion Jockey, Harry Skelton, becoming Dan’s lead jockey in the wake of the establishment of the Dan Skelton Racing yard in 2013.
Skelton has trained the winners of some of the country’s most loved events, working with horses in the same sort of way that his father, Nick Skelton, did during the period of his life in which he became an Olympic gold medal winner in back-to-back Olympic Games.
About
Given the fact that his father won two Olympic gold medals in equestrian events, it would be complete nonsense to suggest that Dan Skelton chose to become a horse racing trainer completely against the expectation of his family. Instead, he entered the business and was lucky enough to work with Paul Nicholls, learning a huge amount about the industry from one of the country’s top trainers. In the wake of his time with Nicholls, he decided that it would make sense for him to open his own yard, establishing Dan Skelton Racing in 2013 in the heart of Warwickshire.
Knowing how important it is to have a strong team around you, Skelton enlisted his brother as the yard’s senior jockey, also bringing his wife, Grace, and Harry’s wife, Bridget, into the team. That has ensured a wealth of experience and talent across numerous areas of the industry, all aided and abetted by the knowledge gleaned by Nick Skelton in his own life. Soon, the yard began to enjoy wins at the highest level of National Hunt racing, giving owners a unique chance to work with a team that does what it can in order to bring out the best of each and every horse that it works with.
Major Successes
As you can imagine, when a yard has been operating in the National Hunt side of the horse racing industry for more than a decade, there have been plenty of big wins for the team behind it to celebrate. When it comes to jump racing, the Cheltenham Festival is the biggest of them all. Although the Gold Cup has eluded them, there are numerous other races from the meeting that the Skelton team has been able to be in the Winners’ Enclosure for. The likes of the Golden Miller Novices’ Chase and the Baring Bingham Novices’ Hurdle stand out.
Here is a look at just some of the other races that Dan Skelton has trained the winner of:
- Ryanair Chase
- David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle
- Coral Cup
- Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase
- Henry VIII Novices’ Chase
- Betfair Chase
- Mersey Novices’ Hurdle
- Finale Juvenile Hurdle
- Manifesto Novices’ Chase
- Challow Novices’ Hurdle
Horses Trained
Langer Dan non runner this afternoon @CheltenhamRaces
Here is an update from Dan this morning. pic.twitter.com/8hsLkdS4rh
— Dan Skelton Racing (@DSkeltonRacing) March 13, 2025
When you operate towards the top of the jump racing game, you are going to be faced with the chance to work with some top-class horses. That is the position that Dan Skelton has found himself in over the years, picking up wins with horses like Unexpected Party, Shan Blue and My Drogo. They have allowed him to win some excellent races, all whilst knowing that the heartbreak of losing a horse is an ever-present risk associated with the industry. Bearing the title of ‘most promising trainer in England’ at one point was a burden to carry, but the horses he’s worked with have proven why he was given the label.
Here is a closer look at just some of the horses that Skelton has worked with over the years:
Langer Dan
If you’re going to work with a horse, working with one that goes on to break records isn’t a bad way to be. In Langer Dan, that’s exactly what Dan Skelton had on his hands, seeing the Colm Donlon-owned horse winning the Coral Cup in successive years of the Cheltenham Festival. The first win came in 2023, with the second following a year later, achieving something that no other horse had ever managed. He won six of his 27 races, supplementing those victories with four second places and three third places, mostly with Dan’s brother Harry in the saddle.
Allmankind
No, this isn’t the Australian rock group from Sydney, but instead a horse that has taken Dan Skelton to victory in more than a couple of races. His name came to the forefront of the attention of most people in the world of National Hunt racing when he was the standout novice chaser in 2020-2021, winning both the Kingmaker at Warwick Racecourse and the Future Champions Novices’ Chase at Ayr. He won the Henry VIII Novices’ Chase in 2020, having already picked up the Finale Juvenile Hurdle the year before, showing that he was a class act.
Protektorat
When Protektorat entered the Skelton stables, he was a wild novice that needed to be tamed in order to take it to the big boys in the National Hunt lineup. A 2021 win in the Manifesto Novices’ Chase showed that he had ability, whilst the Ryanair Chase win that he achieved in 2024 proved that Skelton had been able to harness it successfully. It wasn’t a bad accomplishment for a horse that was clearly special but that came fifth in a race at Cheltenham and seventh in one at Kempton during his second season with the yard, before the Sir Alex Ferguson part-owned horse began to settle down.
