If Dan Skelton’s time to scale jump racing’s summit has finally arrived, horses such as Panic Attack, a nine-year-old mare and the trainer’s first winner of the Paddy Power Gold Cup, will feel as significant as Grade One victories when it comes to the final reckoning.
All but three or four of the dozen runners in Saturday’s race, the first big handicap chase of the season, were still in with a chance as they ran down the hill for the final time, but it was Panic Attack, at 6-1, who found the better turn of foot from the last after jumping it half a length behind Vicenzo, the favourite.
Her four-length success added £91,000 to Skelton’s 2025-26 total, taking him within sight of £1.2m for the campaign, and even if it proves to be Panic Attack’s only contribution to the cause, it should still be enough to make her one of Skelton’s top-10 earners this season.
Skelton’s closest pursuer at this stage of the title race is Olly Murphy, who has scarcely half the leader’s total, and it is highly likely that Skelton will build an even bigger lead over the next three months.
The question, though, as it has been in the last two campaigns, is whether it will be enough to cling on when the full force of the Willie Mullins stable is brought to bear at the big spring festivals, here at Cheltenham and at Aintree, in March and April next year.
“We’ve never won this before so that’s brilliant,” said Skelton, who also picked up a handy £17,000 from Hoe Joly Smoke’s third-place finish. “We’ve been second a couple of times and I remember Spiritofthegames [in 2020], I’ve never left a racecourse more disappointed for a horse because Norman Lake, his owner, was one of our first supporters. He died a couple of years ago and it would have been great to have won a race like that for him.
“But this horse is just very, very tough and she’s a great advertisement for our whole team, the vets, physios, the staff who look after them on a day-to-day basis, because she’s been a fragile horse.”
Skelton is quoted at 2-5 for a first title by Paddy Power, with Mullins (7-4) the only other runner at single-figure odds, and the most positive news for Skelton’s backers is that he feels his string is only now hitting peak form.
Fontwell: 12.27 Atreides 12.57 Just Forty 1.32 Galactic Charm 2.05 Shantou Lucky 2.42 One Island 3.17 Ballyfinn 3.52 Atlantic Power
Cheltenham: 1.15 Gaelic Pride 1.45 Jordans Cross (nb) 2.20 Glengouly (nap) 2.55 Tanganyika 3.30 Alexei 4.00 Bud Fox
“It’s weird how it happens,” Skelton said. “I said to [my wife] Grace, I think in the middle of last week or the week before: ‘I just feel like they’re about to turn.’ I didn’t know when it was going to happen or why it was going to happen, but it just felt like the bubbles were getting to the surface. I can’t tell you why it happens, but it did.”
Both of the feature events on day two of the November meeting were won by mares, as Henry de Bromhead’s July Flower, the 6-5 favourite, beat Skelton’s Be Aware by a length and a half in the Grade Two Arkle Trial Novice Chase.
The win inevitably evoked memories of another mare from the same stable, Put The Kettle On, who took the same race in 2019 and went on to win the Arkle Trophy itself at the festival the following March and then the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2021.
“We’ll take it one step at a time but what I can tell you is they are so much the opposite,” De Bromhead said. “This one is the sweetest mare you’ll ever come across while all Put The Kettle On wanted to do was eat you alive. They are so different, but both have so much ability.”
The trainer also paid tribute to the winning jockey, Darragh O’Keeffe, who has taken over as the stable’s No 1 after the retirement of Rachael Blackmore at the end of last season. “He has all the attributes Rachael had,” De Bromhead said. “The hunger, the want, the natural ability. He knows how hard he has to work and just really wants it. We are so lucky to have had him step into her shoes.”
