JP McManus purchases Challow Hurdle winner The New Lion

Challow Hurdle hero The New Lion has been sold to JP McManus, with previous owner Darren Yates stating his intention to leave racing at the end of the season.

The six-year-old has won each of his four starts for Dan and Harry Skelton, with a debut victory in a Market Rasen bumper in the spring followed by a hat-trick of wins over hurdles.

He was hugely impressive when successfully graduating to Grade One level at Newbury over the festive period, giving Yates and his wife Annaley their first taste of top-level success.

Yates has invested huge sums in buying racehorses, most notably spending €700,000 on Interconnected, who failed to win a race afterwards.

However, in a deal that appears to have been brokered by fellow owner Paul Byrne – who has previously sold several of his own horses to McManus – Yates has decided to let go of his prized asset.

Detailing the reasoning behind the decision on Nick Luck's Daily Podcast, he said: "At the start of the season, Annaley and I made a decision really that we were thinking of getting out of racing altogether.

"Different things in our lives, grandkids – times change. But when I spoke to Dan (Skelton) about it, he said 'look, for the first time ever, you’ve got a superb team. You’ve got the likes of The New Lion and Cherie d’Am. You could sell them all now in a dispersal, but you’re not going to get the value’.

"I said ‘OK, I’m prepared to crack on’, and obviously that was a risk as well, as a horse is only a day away from getting injured. I said to Dan ‘let’s try to make a target of trying to win a Grade One’ and he said he thought it was definitely achievable with the ammunition we’ve got."

Yates revealed the decision to sell The New Lion to McManus has been in the works for some time and