• Game Spirit is the plan for Arkle Chase favourite
• Trainer has strong lineup for Doncaster on Saturday
The thousands of jump racing enthusiasts seeking Festival clues from Trials Day at Cheltenham on Saturday may be looking in the wrong place. Nicky Henderson, whose Lambourn base is convenient for Cheltenham, nevertheless expects to travel to Doncaster that day with up to eight horses, including two with obvious chances in major races this spring.
As he spoke to the press at his Seven Barrows stable on Tuesday morning, Henderson radiated enthusiasm for Kid Cassidy and Sprinter Sacre, both entered in the two-mile novice chase at the Yorkshire track. "You could say there are holes in what they've beat but … the times were unbelievable," he said. "They're horses that have gone round on the bridle and finished on the bridle."
Only one of the pair will actually run at Doncaster and it appears more likely to be Kid Cassidy, as the trainer revealed he is considering the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury for Sprinter Sacre. That would be a first step outside novice company and would represent a major statement of faith in the six-year-old, currently the 5-2 favourite for the Arkle Trophy at the Cheltenham Festival.
The Irish trainer Noel Meade called Sprinter Sacre "potentially as good a chaser as I've seen" in Monday's Racing Post. Henderson suggested that Meade was trying to "put the frighteners on me" but conceded that his horse was "very fit and very well".
The same is also true of Kid Cassidy, despite his two near-death experiences in the past year, one when he received an electric shock at Newbury that killed two horses and the other when he almost failed to recover from a heavy fall at Lingfield in November.
Henderson was at Lingfield and was told by the vet, some three hours after the fall, that Kid Cassidy's pulse was at zero. "They were just dripping in fluids until, when they said he had one minute to go, he decided to wake up and turn the corner."
The horse has since recovered well enough to win with absurd ease at Ludlow last week and the trainer now seems to have two live contenders for the Arkle, for which Kid Cassidy is 25-1.
The other focus of Henderson's attention at Doncaster will be Shakalakaboomboom, who lines up for the Sky Bet Chase, formerly known as the Great Yorkshire. Now eight, he is the trainer's main Grand National contender this year and Henderson would like to get him another couple of pounds up the ratings in order to ensure that he will get a run in the Aintree race.
"He looked, at Cheltenham, as if he stayed and galloped and jumped. He's got all the right credentials [for the National]. He's a very sensible sort of person." If Shakalakaboomboom is indeed raised in the weights after Saturday, he is unlikely to run again before Aintree.
Henderson was speaking at a media event arranged to publicise the William Hill Welsh Champion Hurdle at Ffos Las on Saturday week, when his Oscar Whisky is likely to start a strong favourite. Both the horse and the racecourse are owned by Dai Walters, who was thrilled when Oscar Whisky won the race last year and then finished third in the Champion Hurdle itself.
This time, Oscar Whisky's Cheltenham target is more likely to be a clash with Big Buck's in the three-mile World Hurdle. Walters assessed the choice as being balanced "60-40" in favour of the longer race but Henderson was more adamant. "If he breaks the track record over two miles at Ffos Las, obviously we might think again," was his view.
"He's got the natural speed to travel with Big Buck's. He's not going to get outpaced that easily. Now, whether stamina lasts … if stamina lasts, then he must have as good a chance as any horse has had of getting somewhere near him. We'll have to find out. We've no way of finding out before Cheltenham."
Henderson denied that he would be more likely to aim Oscar Whisky for the Champion if he did not also have Grandouet and Binocular, in other ownership, for that race. "I've said all season, I would still want to go three miles unless something very odd turns up."
To laughter from reporters, the trainer joked that he hoped to avoid a late change of mind on the subject, as it might bring down similar criticism to that which he endured when Binocular won the 2010 Champion Hurdle after Henderson had at one stage said he would not run.
Asked if he could pinpoint a flaw in Big Buck's, the trainer said: "There hasn't been for two years, has there? He doesn't put a foot wrong. I only wish he hadn't made those mistakes over fences [in 2009, prompting his switch back to hurdles], in which case he'd be chasing and he'd probably be crashing his way round and nobody would have known what he was."
Asked about some of his other Cheltenham contenders, Henderson said that Grandouet would have his final prep for the Champion Hurdle in Wincanton's Kingwell Hurdle on 18 February. Binocular will be aimed at the same Sandown race on Saturday week which he has won for the past two years.
Long Run, last year's Gold Cup winner, was described as "fresh and well and bouncing about". His target is the Denman Chase at Newbury on 11 February, where he may meet his stablemate Burton Port, another Gold Cup entrant who has not raced since finishing second in the 2010 Hennessy but is now said to be healthy.
Henderson may again have a strong hand in the Triumph Hurdle, which he has won five times, including twice in the past three years. But he was unwilling to discuss the horses he had in mind, saying: "One did arrive this week, I'm not telling you what it's called. If the entries closed now, I would enter three but you haven't seen any of them yet."
Nicky Henderson craves Cheltenham Gold Cup at end of troubled Festival
Winners dry up for trainer whose horses at meeting have been dope-tested but Long Run triumph would brighten his mood
National Hunt racing has treated us to Red Rum overcoming Crisp, Bob Champion beating cancer to win the Grand National and Dawn Run seeing off the boys in a Gold Cup. Nicky Henderson has his own dark obstacle to surmount in the Festival's defining race on Friday. Long Run's bid is no longer a straightforward Corinthian tale.
In the saddle, yes. When Sam Waley-Cohen boards Long Run in this Gold Cup he will attempt to become the first amateur since Jim Wilson in 1981 to win chasing's most illustrious prize. Waley-Cohen, 28, divides his time between running a dental services firm with 150 employees and galloping round England upsides the likes of Ruby Walsh and AP McCoy.
Long Run, the joint-favourite with Imperial Commander, is his father Robert's horse. Their quest is a family affair, maintained in honour of Thomas Waley-Cohen, Sam's brother, who succumbed to cancer at the age of 20. This story of enterprise and togetherness is from the top drawer of steeplechasing yarns. But Henderson, Long Run's trainer, has his own reasons for wanting to break his Gold Cup duck, and they stem from a need to protect his reputation.
Henderson is the emotional, bustling, old school master of Seven Barrows in Lambourn who described himself as "shattered" when the defending champion, Binocular, had to be withdrawn from Tuesday's Champion Hurdle after the stable were told he would test positive for a banned substance if he carried the JP McManus colours round Cheltenham in the most important race for hurdlers.
The fuss started when a stablemate of Binocular returned a positive post-race A-test for a steroid administered 18 days before the event. Conventional veterinary wisdom was that the substance would clear after eight days. Alarmed by the positive result, Henderson plumped for an elective test on Binocular and scratched the Champion Hurdle favourite when the British Horseracing Authority told him the horse would fail a post-race test if he turned up in the Cotswolds.
Henderson is a trainer to the royal family and has won more than £1m in prize money this season. But there is more to this episode than an establishment figure narrowly averting a scandal on day one of the Festival. Indignation persists over the failure by Henderson and the British Horseracing Authority to announce that Binocular would not be able to run. The horse's elective test showed positive on Thursday – but the disclosure was delayed until Sunday morning.
Three years ago Henderson was fined £40,000 and banned from making race entries for three months after Moonlit Path, owned by the Queen, tested positive for tranexamic acid, a banned blood-clotting agent. The vet who injected the royal mare with the banned substance, James Main, was recently struck off.
Against this background Long Run's trainer has endured a miserable Festival, despite starting the week joint-favourite to send out the most winners, a title he has won eight times. With 37 Festival victories, he started the week only three behind Fulke Walwyn's all-time record of 40, and sent a strong team headed by the country's best young chaser, Long Run, who halted Kauto Star's quest for a fifth consecutive King George at Kempton. Henderson declines to discuss these controversies. He is increasingly sensitive about the use of "doping" or "dope tests" in relation to incidents he regards as accidents or oversights. And he was known to be irritated when his runners on Tuesday were hauled off for post-race tests. His Cheltenham winners have dried up just when he needed a dose of cheer to lift the ill-feeling over how he delayed the Binocular announcement and the doubts about veterinary procedures at his yard.
So Long Run brings a darker hue of melodrama to the Gold Cup, with many punters pointing out that had a less powerful operation run into the kind of difficulties the Henderson yard encountered last week then condemnation would have been more stinging. There is no rush to cast aspersions in relation to the way Binocular's Champions Hurdle preparation was mismanaged. But plenty feel there are unanswered questions and wonder how so many errors came to be made.
The intrepid Waley-Cohen family are entitled to separate themselves from this hullabaloo. Their mission retains its purity. They bought Long Run because he was a "spectacular" specimen, to quote Sam, and because they owned others from his family tree. In the King George, his jockey feels, horse and rider proved they belong on this exalted stage. But the Gold Cup is another level up. To see Waley-Cohen matching strides with Walsh, McCoy and co will be the most compelling amateur-professional clash since Mr J Wilson booted home Little Owl.
Mr S Waley-Cohen – mountaineer, helicopter pilot and motorbike rider – brings a thrilling edge to his hobby. "What you're trying to do is take a horse to the edge of what it's capable of," he says. "The second you step back into the safety zone and say: 'I can't get it wrong, I can't get it wrong,' you're not going to win. There's an element of 'throw your heart over it' to persuade the horse about what you're trying to do. And if it doesn't work – boom!"