Team tactics are against racing’s rules but Cheltenham’s ability to produce an unlikely collaborative atmosphere was underlined after an unexpected British rally on Thursday.
Reeling from years of unprecedented Irish dominance, a beleaguered home team began day three trailing 10-3 on this week’s winners table, only to come up trumps with five of the seven winners. To add to the sense of unreality, Willie Mullins even drew a blank on the day.
Central to the resurgence were the brothers Dan and Harry Skelton, who’d honourably held their bit of the line with a handicap double the day before. This time the siblings struck twice at the highest level with Protektorat in the Ryanair Chase and Grey Dawning in the Turners Novice Chase.
Along with Monmiral’s 25-1 surprise for Paul Nicholls in the Pertemps Final, it was an unanticipated opening home response cheered to the rafters by local fans perhaps fed up with looking to Ireland for winners.
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The presence of the former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson as part of Monmiral and Protektorat’s ownership only emphasised a sense of home team defiance many doubted would materialise this week.
Dan Skelton even got in a jokey “Rule Britannia!” after his brother steered Grey Dawning to success in a race where British-trained horse filled the frame. There was no Irish runner in the first six of the Pertemps and after Protektorat scored, it felt like a case of crisis, what crisis?
If Gordon Elliott’s Teahupoo briefly stemmed the tide with Stayers’ glory, it didn’t last long as the Co Meath trainer’s supreme confidence in his odds-on Brighterdaysahead came unstuck in the Mares’ Novice Hurdle.
Shorn of Dysart Enos through lameness, the 10-1 shot Golden Ace still came through to beat the favourite, leaving many punters, not just Irish ones, shaking their heads.
Considering so much festival coverage comes under an amorphous Team Ireland theme – even when it’s really Team Mullins – it was perhaps inevitable how salvaged local pride might provoke a similar synergy.
That much of it was Team Skelton reflects Dan Skelton’s increasing power at the top of the training tree. The 38-year-old son of Olympic showjumper Nick Skelton is just the type of hungry figure a beleaguered cross-channel sector needs to take it to Mullins & Co.
The greatest week of his career to date has been timely too on the back of a hefty £6,000 fine from the British Horseracing Authority over the controversial sale of a horse in 2016. Skelton was found to have failed to reveal to prospective owners he would financially benefit from the purchase.
All that got swept aside as his younger brother guided a pair of Grade One winners in 70 minutes.
“I wouldn’t say this is the coming of [age] of us, we’ve got great horses, and sometimes it just comes together. I don’t know what the magic dust was. What is going on here is what we all try to do, it’s just it rarely happens,” the trainer said before issuing a rallying call.
“This is a sport, people have supporters, and as trainers we have owners. What we’ve got to do is knuckle down, we all are, and get stuck into it and it’ll turn.
“I’m not saying it will turn all the way back and it probably wouldn’t be a good thing to have such one-sidedness ever again.
“Willie by his own admission says he seeks competition and all of this England versus Ireland talk, I hate to break it to everyone but it’s everyone versus Willie, so we need a dose of reality on that as well,” Skelton added.
Reality felt rather fluid when the football thread continued to the Plate handicap chase where Shakem Up’Arry had the Cheltenham stands rattling.
Owned by the former Tottenham and West Ham manager Harry Redknapp, the Ben Pauling-trained 8-1 winner just held on up the hill under jockey Ben Jones.
“Me and Alex [Ferguson] both love it. It’s great to see him have two winners today and I’ve had mine now,” said Redknapp after uttering what, in the circumstances, was a justifiable “get in there”.
Pauling was more restrained but just as ready to deliver defiance.
“The last two days have been really tough. There’s a lot of talk about the Irish and English and to say we don’t have the hunger for this game is daft.
“We’ve got as much hunger as anyone, Dan Skelton has proved that. I was delighted for him, but it doesn’t mean that we didn’t want one.
“I turned up with three horses yesterday that I thought would be in the first three and I think we beat three horses home. You have doubts and think you’ve done too much with them or whatever. This is where it matters and once you get one, get their head in front, you can breathe,” he said.
Going into the final day, it leaves the team scores 12-8; maybe even enough to make it a case of game on.
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