David Walsh on Skelton and George Gently (Sunday Times)

DAVID WALSH
The hapless horse, top trainer and owners’ six-year wait for justice
New evidence sheds more light on dispute between trainer Dan Skelton and buyers of failed racehorse George Gently that is still under investigation by BHA
David Walsh, Chief Sports Writer
Saturday February 24 2024, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times
Leading trainer Skelton, left, and Barker, right, who is lovingly caring for George Gently in retirement
Leading trainer Skelton, left, and Barker, right, who is lovingly caring for George Gently in retirement
For the horse at least, the story ended well. George Gently, an 11-year-old gelding, now lives on a stud farm outside Grantham, in Lincolnshire. He is cared for by Jayde-Michelle Barker, who saw him in a field more than three years ago and knew he was the one. They are, she says, in a “till death do us part” relationship.
She comes each morning and, looking from the half-door of his box, he whinnies on seeing her. She brings breakfast and, five days a week, saddles him up for an hour and a half’s gentle exercise. Though she has ridden horses and ponies for most of her life, Barker says: “George’s are my favourite pair of ears to sit behind.”
He was once a racehorse, a career to which he was unsuited. As racing people like to say, he wasn’t a sound horse. Too many injuries. Too little speed. At first it seemed he would be OK, as he was second in a three-year-old hurdle race at Enghien, north of Paris. It went downhill after that. A sore tendon kept him off the track for a year and a half and he was never the same.
Barker saw him in that field seven months after his sixth and final race. She could tell he was feeling sorry for himself, as though the travails of his previous life had crushed his spirit. His owner knew Barker would take good care of the horse and from the beginning she worked on what made the horse happy.
Little things. He liked to be rubbed behind his ears and to have the white star on his forehead patted. Having the massage pad on his back was another of his favourites, as was a bed of fresh straw. The way some people prefer to drink from a bottle, he liked water directly from a hosepipe. And he loved being told he was “a good boy”. As for the muffins they had at the stud, give him one of those and he was yours for the day.
Skelton, centre, has risen to the top of the training profession, enjoying winners at the biggest jumps meetings, such as the Cheltenham Festival
Skelton, centre, has risen to the top of the training profession, enjoying winners at the biggest jumps meetings, such as the Cheltenham Festival
SPORTSFILE
Barker also discovered he didn’t like the bit inside his mouth and horseshoes hurt his feet. So now nothing is put inside his mouth and he takes his exercise unshod. When he’s out in the field, Jayde’s six-year-old son, Hunter, can call him from the gate, he’ll come to the boy and they’ll walk back together to the yard. While Jayde cleans his hooves in the box, her one-year-old, Alora-Rose, brushes his standing legs.
“George is an absolute horse of a lifetime,” Jayde says. “I feel lucky to have been able to give him the life he deserves and am very proud of the horse George is today. He is living proof of the belief that ‘you get out what you put in’. ”
Two thousand and 36 days have passed since the racehorse owner Tony Holt and his partners in a racing syndicate brought up the subject of George Gently with the British Horseracing Authority. This was July 30, 2018. They had filed a complaint alleging that their high-profile trainer, Dan Skelton, had acted improperly in relation to their purchase of the horse.
Son of Olympic gold medal-winning showjumper Nick, Skelton is a young and ambitious trainer with whom the syndicate had enjoyed notable success. Five months before buying George Gently, another of their horses, Superb Story, had given Skelton his first winner at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival. They considered Skelton a top trainer and at the time had six horses with him.
Then along came George Gently and everything changed. After the horse’s promising first run in France, Holt was contacted by the bloodstock agent Richard Venn, who thought George Gently would be a good buy. “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,” Venn wrote in a message to Holt.
George Gently takes part in a schooling session at Skelton’s yard, but failed to make any impact on the racecourse
George Gently takes part in a schooling session at Skelton’s yard, but failed to make any impact on the racecourse
GROSSICK PHOTOGRAPHY
At £130,000, the horse was expensive. The good part was he was trained by Skelton and the syndicate was able to tap into the trainer’s expertise. Skelton was encouraging and they were persuaded. “Dan’s conviction,” Holt wrote to syndicate members, “that the horse is potentially high class may be our most concrete guide.”
With racehorses, the journey begins with a dream and most often ends in disappointment. Those who get involved do so with eyes open. The particular disappointment with George Gently was that hope perished so quickly. His pre-purchase veterinary examination had to be postponed because of some injury or other and then soon after he got the all-clear, there was a tendon injury that kept him off the track for more than 500 days.
For the syndicate he ran only twice. The first time he got so tired he couldn’t finish. Second race, he was seventh out of eight. At that point it was clear that he wasn’t going to be a successful racehorse. Eighteen months after costing £130,000, George Gently was sold for £1,800. Holt and his co-owners fully understood this went with the territory. You hobnob with pals in the owners’ and trainers’ bar while outside in the corridor, bad luck is doing press-ups.
Feeling the syndicate had been particularly unlucky, the horse’s previous owner, David Futter, from Yorton Farm Stud, agreed to gift them a cheap, fun horse. He had one that he valued at £15,000, but the syndicate suggested they would buy another, and Futter could just knock £15,000 off the price.
They talked about it a bit and Futter complained to Holt that he was having to carry the can for George Gently even though Skelton had owned one third of the horse. Futter would later deny saying this, but Holt felt sure about what he had heard. If Skelton had owned a third of George Gently, he hadn’t mentioned this to any member of the syndicate when encouraging them to buy. The agreement that covers owner-trainer relationships in racing states that a trainer must disclose an ownership interest to the buyer.
George Gently, an 11-year-old gelding, now lives on a stud farm outside Grantham and is cared for by Barker
George Gently, an 11-year-old gelding, now lives on a stud farm outside Grantham and is cared for by Barker
Holt asked Futter to ring Skelton and repeat what he’d just said. Soon Holt received a message from Skelton. “Dave apologised to me for what he’s said. I said I’ll collect the [gift] horse tomorrow. I will keep the horse FOC [free of charge] until July 2019 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. I hope this episode doesn’t effect that. My ambition is to be champion trainer and train heaps of Grade One winners and I need you in my corner to get anywhere near such a goal.
“Training racehorses is a job and with it comes difficulty. Owning them should be a pleasure and I’m sorry you’ve had to experience what you have over the last week. Be assured I only wanted a positive outcome for you from it and I’m more disappointed than I can explain with what has occurred.”
For the syndicate, the trust that had once existed was gone. They removed their six horses from Skelton’s yard and two months later they lodged an official complaint against Skelton with the BHA. Fifteen months later the regulatory body replied, effectively dismissing the owners’ complaint. The BHA’s initial judgment was that Skelton could only be sanctioned for secretly benefiting from the sale or purchase of a horse if he had acted “without reasonable care and skill”.
The syndicate believed this could not be right and got their legal counsel to look at the BHA’s regulations. Their legal advice was that the BHA’s conclusion was “perverse”. Presented with this assessment, the BHA re-opened the case. Time passed. Nothing happened. No one was happy.
In November 2021, more than three years after the complaint against him was lodged, Skelton released a statement to the Racing Post. “Mr Holt embarked on a campaign against me in relation to his purchase of George Gently some time ago. That began in mid-2018 when he made a complaint against me to the BHA. The BHA carefully and properly investigated that complaint and I gave them my full co-operation. The BHA, on completion of its investigation, concluded that no further action should be taken.
“Mr Holt over the next two years then made a number of threats of legal action before raising a further complaint with the BHA concerning the same horse. I have offered my full co-operation and assistance to the BHA.”
The following month the BHA informed the owners that Skelton would be charged with breaches of the trainers’ code of conduct. The governing body did not publicly announce this, and in January 2022 Holt and his fellow syndicate members wrote to the BHA expressing their fear that it was reluctant to hold Skelton to account.
In his defence against the initial complaint, Skelton produced an invoice, sent by his company Jam House Bloodstock to Yorton Farm Stud on November 16, 2016, for £42,033. The invoice detailed training fees and related costs arising from six Yorton Farm Stud horses. This invoice came at the same time as the George Gently sale and the £42,033 amount equated exactly to one-third of the horse’s cost, plus VAT, minus the agent’s commission.
Skelton would later inform the BHA that his agreement with Yorton Farm Stud was that they would give him a third of George Gently’s price in lieu of outstanding training fees. The syndicate re-assessed all of their dealings with Skelton and asked the BHA to look into the circumstances surrounding their purchase of two other horses, Goforthecraic and Fadas. They allege there are “suspicious parallels” between the George Gently and Goforthecraic cases. The BHA is investigating.
Frustrated by the BHA’s failure to progress the George Gently case, the syndicate initiated a civil case against Skelton in July 2022. That too moved slowly and, having already spent hundreds of thousands in legal fees, the civil case added significantly to the financial toll. In July 2023 the two parties agreed a confidential out-of-court settlement. Holt said he and his fellow owners would continue to seek justice through the BHA.
As part of the civil case, Skelton’s legal team submitted a copy of an invoice sent to Yorton Farm Stud for the £42,033 owing to the trainer. The invoice provided to the BHA had detailed training fees relating to six Yorton Farm Stud horses with Skelton. The invoice provided in the civil case had the same date and number as the one given to the BHA and was described by Skelton’s legal team as providing “clarity”. It simply said: “For the 33.3% purchase of George Gently.”
Last week, Skelton did not respond to requests for comment. Five months ago the syndicate’s lawyers sent the new invoice to the BHA and still they wait for the regulatory body to bring to a conclusion a case that is now in its sixth year. Charlie Parker, president of the Racehorse Owners’ Association and a BHA board member, told the Racing Post that his organisation had brought up the investigation with the BHA on multiple occasions.
“The legal system has to do what it has to do and the process has to be followed, but the length of time is ridiculous,” Parker said. “It’s unacceptable that it has taken this long with no resolution.”
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