‘We’ve bought with Martin Pipe’s record in mind’ – Dan Skelton chasing history with bold sales ring strategy
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If the sales ring is any guide, Dan Skelton certainly isn’t resting on his laurels. The newly minted champion trainer has added two sales-toppers to his string in recent days, starting with the €500,000 Isaac Of York at Arqana’s Grand Steeple auction last Saturday.
The high-class French four-year-old will be joined by the promising Kaiser Ball, who was knocked down to agent Tom Malone at £360,000 during Wednesday’s session of the Goffs UK Spring Horses in Training and Point-to-Point Sale.
Reflecting on the scale of investment being made by his owners, Skelton said: “We feel very humbled to have the support we’ve got and it does feel like the crest of a wave at the moment. Hopefully the wave doesn’t break!”
The trainer was unable to reveal whose silks Kaiser Ball will carry when he reappears on the track, but said: “He’s a lovely horse and we’re very happy to get him. He’s for a syndicate of four existing owners who are taking a leg each. He’s an exciting horse and he’s basically got Graded form from his maiden.
“He’s a year older than most in the sale, which might be no bad thing. He’s a stayer, and very often those staying novice hurdles are won by six-year-olds pre-Christmas and seven-year-olds post-Christmas, so he fits very nicely in that category.”
As well as taking charge of the exciting Kaiser Ball, Skelton and his bloodstock agent Ryan Mahon signed for a whopping 20 lots for an outlay of £470,000 during Wednesday and Thursday’s sessions in Doncaster.
The haul, which put the team a furlong clear on the buyers’ table by volume of purchases, was headed by the £130,000 Risky Obsession.
Skelton said the major recruitment drive reflected some lofty ambitions, namely rewriting the history books for the number of winners in a single season. The benchmark of 243 was set by Martin Pipe during the 1999-00 campaign.
Risky Obsession was knocked down to Ryan Mahon and Dan Skelton at £130,000Credit: SARAH FARNSWORTH
“There’s a few we’ve bought over the last couple of days with Martin Pipe’s record in mind,” Skelton said. “We’ve bought a few that’ll run in the summer and early autumn and others that are going to be winter horses. You can only do it with the owners and the horses that you have, and I feel very lucky to have the collection of both.”
He continued: “It’s more important to be quality driven in the summer because, without being disrespectful, the races are less competitive. We’ve upped the budget this week to try to buy some of those nicer summer horses. If you can get one horse that wins three, that’s better than having three that win one.”
Skelton already knows plenty about Risky Obsession having won a Warwick bumper with the son of No Risk At All on New Year’s Eve.
He subsequently finished sixth in competitive heats at Newbury and Aintree. The winning Irish pointer was last seen carrying the colours of Craig and Laura Buckingham, who paid £190,000 for the youngster at the David Maxwell Dispersal.
“The horse will have a new owner, whether that’s a new owner to the yard or an existing owner I don’t yet know,” Skelton said. “We’ve got a bit of interest, as you’d expect for a decent horse, and I’m obviously happy to be taking him home. He’ll go novice hurdling next year. Harry [Skelton] was really happy with him and when he got off him at Warwick he said ‘This is a really good horse.’”
Mahon and Skelton also combined to secure four lots during Monday’s Spring Store Sale, with their receipts totalling £148,000. But having played so strongly in the form horse market, the trainer said he did not expect to be “quite so all out” at the upcoming Irish store sales.
He did, however, stress that no stone would be left unturned during the upcoming National Hunt transfer window, adding: “Good horses can come from anywhere, can’t they?”
Although Skelton has developed into a dominant force within the training ranks, things did not go quite so smoothly for the family run Alne Park Stud.
The Skeltons’ breeding operation was home to stallions such as Dink, Ocovango and Subjectivist, but ceased operations following the 2025 breeding season. The stables previously home to breeding stock are now being used by the expanded string of horses in training.
Wednesday’s sale-topper Kaiser Ball will join the Skelton foldCredit: Sarah Farnsworth
Opening up on having to call time on the Alne Park venture, Skelton said: “I’m a bit sad it hasn’t worked out the way we hoped it would, but it was always going to be hard as we were trying to drive a square peg into a round hole.
“That’s in terms of the number of mares in Britain but also the way the breeding industry is in this country. I always felt people would say, ‘That’s a Skelton thing’ and that we’d just look after our own, but it was never meant to be about that.
“We had Ocovango there who gets winners every day of the week, Cheltenham Festival winners, so it was sad that he couldn’t get support because he deserved every bit of it. It’s a shame it didn’t work out.”
He added: “The idea was for the stud to be commercial, and I thought we had some nice stallions. After three years we cut back the commercial side of it and used those stables for horses in training.
“We’ve retained somewhere between 15 to 18 mares for existing clients from the racing and stud side of the business. They’ve gone to a mix of British, Irish and French stallions.”
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