Cheltenham 2019: Trainer Nicky Henderson seeking more Festival glory after nightmare build-up

Calm before the storm: Nicky Henderson with Buveur D’Air, who is bidding for his third successive Champion Hurdle success
PA
Alex Constantinou11 March 2019

Just like a top snooker player, Nicky Henderson is thinking five or six shots ahead.

His whole year revolves around achieving big breaks at the Cheltenham Festival and the results are there for all to see. He has chalked up 60 winners at racing’s showpiece event — no other British-based trainer has managed more than 43 — and on three occasions been the top trainer.

The 68-year-old is accustomed to the odd slice of misfortune along the way but nothing could have prepared him for the upheaval of the past few weeks.

Relief his team of horses were clear of flu during the outbreak which hit the sport last month — his yard was one of 174 put in lockdown and vigorously tested — turned to disbelief when, overnight, the British Horseracing Authority changed vaccination rules.

Instead of an inoculation for flu being required in the previous year, trainers woke up to find that the governing body demanded that their horses required a “booster” vaccination in the past six months.

For Henderson, it caused disruption at the worst time, hard on the heels of heavy snow in Lambourn also giving him a headache.

Several of his horses missed key prep races and virtually all of his team had their usual training regimes halted while vets stuck needles in them.

“We reckon they need three or four quiet days afterwards, and 10 days before they can build up to proper work again,” Henderson said. “You have to be careful and can’t just suddenly gallop them. Some can go very quiet on you.

“Every yard has a different strategy. We were among those who got caught out and thrown out of sync. I don’t like doing it [booster jabs] at Christmas because it affects the horses. Having to switch them off for a week brought us horribly close to Cheltenham.”

And just when Henderson thought he was over the worst, one of his big guns suffered an injury scare a week before the Festival. Santini pulled off a shoe during a racecourse gallop but is expected to be fit to line-up in the RSA Chase on Wednesday.

Henderson’s Festival team is led by Buveur D’Air, who seeks a third successive Champion Hurdle success tomorrow, and Altior, a hot favourite to become the first back-to-back winner of the Champion Chase for a decade on Wednesday. The former has won 12 of his past 13 races, while the latter has soared to 17 straight victories and needs one more to equal the jumps record.

Buveur D’Air has probably not received the recognition he deserves. He scrambled home by a neck last year and his trainer is adamant he did well to win.

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“He wasn’t at his best,” said Henderson, who is on course to secure a sixth Jumps trainers’ title. “He lived in a box next door to We Have A Dream, who had a temperature which was absolutely screaming on the Monday morning before Cheltenham.

“You have to take it that he had been affected by We Have A Dream [being ill]. I still think he is the one to beat.”

Might Bite, meanwhile, will have to put two poor runs behind him as he bids to go one better in the Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday, after finishing runner-up last year.

Before Might Bite lines up, a number of his younger, emerging stablemates will be on show. Angels Breath, Mister Fisher, Epatante, Champ, Birchdale,

Dickie Diver and OK Corral have the potential to become future stars.

But, for now, Henderson is living very much in the present. What would he settle for this week? “The main thing is to try to get a winner on the first day and then you can enjoy it,” he said. “The horses all have their own mountains to climb and are coming in off a bizarre preparation.”

If anyone can get out of being snookered, it is Henderson.

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