Harry Skelton produces masterclass aboard greyRecord 11th victory in the race for trainer Paul NichollsHistory is written by those who turn up and so it was that Politologue bagged the Tingle Creek here to go along with his Champion Chase victory in March, both races Altior missed. It made for a rotten day for Altior’s trainer, Nicky Henderson, whose six runners were beaten and then looked rattled in a TV interview, but it yielded the best afternoon in the career of Harry Skelton, who rode two Grade One winners.
“You wouldn’t see a better ride around here,” Paul Nicholls said of Skelton’s efforts aboard Allmankind in the Henry VIII Novice Chase. Nicholls’s runner, Hitman, worked hard to close the gap in the straight, but Skelton had poached a handy lead over the railway fences and never relinquished it.