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| Cheltenham Festival 2011 |
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Nicky Henderson Looking Strong for Cheltenham
25/02/11
Nicky Henderson goes into The Festival 2011 with a strong team and he is pleased that the horses are running well.
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The Festival’s leading current trainer, with 37 successes, said: “January was amazing month for us and then a few got beaten. The margin between absolutely firing and just getting beaten is very thin.
“The horses are in top form again and last weekend was good. By and large the horses have had their final outings before Cheltenham and now we are hoping they don’t have problems before The Festival.
“It is nice to have a winner on the first day as that relaxes you. We have had realistic challengers all along for the Champion Hurdle but Long Run is my best chance of having a Gold Cup winner. The Stan James Champion Hurdle victory on the opening day of The Festival, Tuesday, March 15, Centenary Day.
“AP (15-time champion jockey Tony McCoy) is coming over next on Friday to partner Binocular and will school him next week.
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“I don’t know why he ran the way he did (winning but not impressively) though if Ruthenoise made the running they cannot have been going very fast!
“It certainly looks a very open Champion Hurdle and the horses in it appear very good. Looking at the re-run of this season’s Paddy Power over two miles, five furlongs, the experienced handicappers going lickety split just got him out of his comfort zone early on and therefore the rhythm just did not come into it. We have worked on that quite a lot and so has Sam (Long Run’s amateur rider, Sam Waley-Cohen) and Yogi (Breisner). We have another session with Yogi next week in an indoor school - not ours - and previous ones definitely helped him.
“We know what we have to do in the build-up and I am not worried about Cheltenham. The RSA was not great last year but it had been a long campaign and we took in the Kingmaker over two miles which shows how much natural talent he has.
“He is very young for the Gold Cup but that is the French way. There is nothing else we can do after winning the King George. I would not bring him back in trip for the Ryanair because he stays. He gallops and gallops and gallops - he wasn’t stopping at Kempton.”
