This was in the Times at the weekend:-
The story begins on a September afternoon at Southwell racecourse in Nottinghamshire five years ago. Sulamani The Late is having his third race. Tony Holt and Ian Macnabb, two of the gelding’s five owners, watch from the enclosure. Even in a sport in which dreams are one race away from disappointment, Sulamani The Late’s performance is lamentable.
There are four runners in the novice hurdle. Three of them are keen to race. Sulamani The Late is the odd one out. As the starter springs the tape upwards, Sulamani cocks his head and fixes his front feet. Though his jockey, David England, tries, the horse’s mind is made up. Not today, sunshine. They never get to jump the first hurdle.
For the horse’s up-and-coming trainer, Dan Skelton, it is frustrating. Skelton is the son of the showjumping star Nick, who at age 58 had won a gold medal at the Rio Olympics six weeks before. Dan Skelton had recommended Sulamani The Late to the Holt syndicate and now there is a sense that the £36,000 spent on the horse is halfway down the drain.
Holt and Macnabb have had enough good days to cope with a dismal one. That afternoon Holt received a message from a bloodstock agent who helped the syndicate to find potential horses. “Hi Tony, George Gently was second for Dan [Skelton] in Enghien [France] today. The winner is thought to be very good and it was a great debut run. I bought George for current owners as a yearling and they would be sellers. He is a lovely horse and I feel he could take high rank as a juvenile . . . I feel sure that he is a horse that you [should] be considering.”
After returning from Southwell, Holt emailed Macnabb and another member of the syndicate, John Robertson. Holt was unsure about George Gently. The horse was going to cost £130,000, a lot for a three-year-old with only one run. Against that, there was Skelton’s enthusiasm. “Dan’s conviction,” he wrote, “that the horse is potentially high class may be our most concrete guide.”
Holt expressed one other reservation. “Both Dan and [the bloodstock agent] represent the seller as well as us so are not totally independent,” he wrote. By that he meant Skelton’s dual position as a trainer of horses owned by Holt and Macnabb, and of George Gently for the horse’s then owners.
“If Dan convinces you, I’m in,” Macnabb replied.
Ultimately, they were convinced. Four days after Southwell, Holt messaged the agent with a £130,000 offer to buy George Gently.
George Gently retired last year. Then trained by Justin Landy in Yorkshire, his last race was at Newcastle, when he came 12th of 12. He is now a lady’s hack in Lincolnshire. As a racehorse, it did not work out. The Holt syndicate paid £130,000 for a horse that was beaten out of sight on his two runs in their colours. A year after buying him, they sold him for £1,800.
It seemed doomed from the start. The pre-purchase veterinary examination (PPE) was arranged for two days after Holt made the offer to buy. The PPE then had to be postponed after the horse “hit himself in the stable” and though the trainer felt it was nothing, he thought it best to give the horse some rest. It was, he told the owners, “the first lame step he’s ever taken in his life”. Three weeks later George Gently passed his veterinary exam and on November 9, Holt transferred £130,000 to the account of the owners, Yorton Farm Stud.
Three weeks further on, a member of Skelton’s staff noticed that George Gently had heat in a front leg. A scan showed up a tendon injury. Though the trainer did not consider the injury to be serious, he advised that the horse be rested for up to 12 months. Fifteen months would pass before George Gently was fit enough to race. Soon he would be sold for 1.38 per cent of what the owners paid for him.
Holt is a retired Lloyds underwriter; his partners in the syndicate had also been insurance underwriters. They started buying racehorses in 2011 and understood the risks. What disappointment they felt at George Gently’s injury-ridden career was set against the syndicate’s good luck. They had bought Superb Story for £65,000 in 2014, sent him to Skelton and in 2016 he became the syndicate’s, and the trainer’s, first winner at the Cheltenham Festival. The following month the syndicate had its first grade one winner when Arzal won at Aintree.
George Gently was a reminder that they were not always going to choose the right one. They did not blame Skelton, nor Dave Futter, the proprietor of Yorton Farm Stud. They just put it down to bad luck.
In the summer of 2018, 18 months after they had bought George Gently, Holt says the syndicate was offered an inexpensive, “fun horse” free of charge by Futter, who felt bad about George. Holt asked Skelton to help him pick the fun horse. Holt was not excited by any that Futter was freely offering but he did like one that was a little more expensive. He asked if he could offset the value of the free horse against the cost of the one he liked.
Futter was reluctant. Skelton weighed in on Holt’s side, encouraging Futter to do a deal. The trainer and the stud owner continued to argue the toss about which horse Holt should get. According to Holt, Futter called him some time later. “He says, ‘Why should I be the one paying for all of this “gesture horse”? Dan owned a third of the horse [George Gently]’.”
“I say, ‘What do you mean Dan owned a third of George Gently?’ He said, ‘Well, Dan got a one-third cut from the sale of the horse.’ I said, ‘Look, you must tell Dan what you just told me.’ Ten or 15 minutes later Dan is on the phone to me and saying, ‘It’s a lie. It’s not true. It’s not true. He’s maligning me. I did not own one third of the horse.’”
There is an agreement that governs owner-trainer relationships in racing. Clause 10 states: “Upon a sale to the owner of a horse in which the trainer has an ownership interest, the trainer shall make all necessary disclosures to the owner in accordance with the British Horseracing Authority’s Code of Conduct.” It is a logical provision, as often an owner will ask a trainer for advice when buying horses, as happened with George Gently.
Futter denies telling Holt that Skelton was a one-third owner. He says Holt misunderstood or misconstrued what he had said.
After the phone call with Holt, Skelton sent a follow-up text message: “Dave apologised to me for what he’s said. I’ll collect the horse [the free horse from Futter] tomorrow. I will keep the horse FOC [free of charge] until July 2019 [a 12-month period] which will include breaking him in and getting him going. Is that OK with you? I want you to be happy Tony. We have a trusting relationship and I do my best for you.”
The syndicate no longer trusted Skelton. They believed he had a beneficial interest in George Gently that had not been disclosed to them when they asked his opinion about the horse. They removed their six horses from his yard and in late July 2018 they made a formal complaint to the BHA about his behaviour.
Both parties lawyered up. Holt believed from Futter that Skelton had received a payment from Yorton Farm Stud in relation to George Gently. His legal team asked if there had been such a payment. They were told there had been a payment, but that this was in lieu of training fees incurred by Yorton-owned horses in Skelton’s yard. Skelton’s legal team provided them with the relevant invoice.
It had been sent to Yorton Farm Stud on November 16, 2016, one week after the syndicate had paid for George Gently. The invoice was for £42,033 plus VAT. The invoice listed the six Yorton horses involved, detailing the amount of time they had been with Skelton. This accounted for the £42,033 debt.
Holt and his associates considered it unusual that the invoice was sent from Jam House Bloodstock Ltd. Jam House Bloodstock is one of two companies controlled by Skelton and his wife, Grace. Dan Skelton Racing Ltd is the other. In the Companies House register, Jam House’s business is listed as “Activities of racehorse owners” while every invoice the syndicate received from Skelton for training fees was issued by Dan Skelton Racing.
The single greatest source of concern related to the amount claimed for training fees (£42,033) because that happened to be precisely one third of the £130,000 (less the bloodstock agent’s 2.5 per cent commission, plus VAT) they had paid for George Gently.
Fifteen months after lodging the complaint against Skelton, Holt received a reply from the BHA. A letter from its head of regulation, Andrew Howell, explained to Holt that the case against Skelton was not strong enough to initiate any action against the trainer.
Howell also wrote: “The BHA acknowledges that it is regrettable that Mr Skelton did not provide prior notice to you that he would benefit financially from the transaction of George Gently. Following this investigation, the BHA would fully expect Mr Skelton to provide information of this nature to his owners in the future and the BHA has made its expectations with regards to the code of conduct to Mr Skelton in concluding this matter.”
The syndicate refused to accept the BHA’s ruling. For almost 3½ years, the case has rumbled on. In a letter from the BHA last month, Howell said that the involvement of Jam House Bloodstock “was essentially an issue of convenience”. As for the construction of the invoice, Howell wrote, “There is no claim that the training fees of all horses amounted to exactly one third of George Gently.” Howell went on to explain that Skelton’s arrangement with Futter was that the trainer would receive one third of the proceeds from the sale of George Gently in lieu of training fees.
The BHA’s position is that it would have been better for Skelton to advise Holt that he stood to gain financially from the sale of George Gently, but that he was not obliged to do so. In an earlier letter, the governing body advised the syndicate that if it got a judgment against Skelton in a civil case, they would review the case in light of that.
So far, Holt and his friends have spent £120,000 in legal fees. They are determined to continue their action and accept the case may end up in a civil court.
Skelton refused to answer questions about the case. “There are two sides to this story,” he said. He would not elaborate on what his side was.
Who is Dan Skelton?
Skelton set up his own stables in Warwickshire in 2013 after working for the respected trainer Paul Nicholls for several years. He has had four winners at Cheltenham. His brother Harry is a jockey and his father, Nick, won team showjumping gold for Great Britain at the London Olympics and individual gold at Rio 2016.
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Originally Posted by an capall
