He made a commitment to ride Behrens earlier in the year and couldn't get out of it.
Skip Away beat Cigar as a 3yo in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and passed on the BC a few weeks later because he wasn't nomiated. I believe the thinking was that Sonny Hine would again refuse to put up a fortune to supplament and make Skip Away elidigible to run ... but when the mighty Formal Gold and many others started falling ... Skip Away was like the last survivor from an insanely awesome group of older males.
If not for a lot of key injuries ... I don't think Skip Away would have run in the Classic as a 4yo either. Going on memory though
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