Henderson left frustrated as Sir Gino recovery stalls geegeez.co.uk

Nicky Henderson is not ruling out the possibility of heading straight to the Cheltenham Festival with Sir Gino, after revealing his star novice chaser’s recovery from a minor setback was not going as well as hoped on Sunday morning.

A brilliant winner of the Wayward Lad Novices’ Chase at Kempton, the five-year-old was due to have his second run over fences in the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury on Saturday, a race won by former Seven Barrows stars Altior and Sprinter Sacre en-route to landing the Arkle at Cheltenham.

However, Sir Gino was declared a non-runner on Friday after suffering what his trainer described as a “small wound to the inside of his near hind leg”.

Speaking at Newbury on Saturday, Henderson was optimistic his charge would be able to start riding out again on Monday, but that now appears unlikely.

“He wasn’t quite as good as I would have hoped this morning, I must admit. He’s still a bit sore,” the trainer said on Racing TV’s Luck on Sunday programme.

“It is (a flesh wound) and it’s just got a little infection in it and we’re just treating it.

“I’m a bit disappointed this morning, I’ve got to admit, there’s no point in saying anything else. I hoped we might even be riding him tomorrow (Monday) and just now that doesn’t look quite so likely, but we will keep everybody posted.”

Sir Gino’s pre-Festival programme is complicated by the fact that having missed Newbury, there is not an ideal race in the meantime.

Stretching out to two and a half miles for Kempton’s Pendil Novices’ Chase on February 22 is an option, as is a minor two-mile contest at Bangor, but Henderson is not overly keen on either race.

He added: “It’s horrible. We would desperately like to get a run into him before Cheltenham, I still think we probably can.

“One or two people that remember what went past have said they can remember three horses that have won the Arkle on only their second run over fences, so that gives me hope – as if that is desperately the case, that is what we might have to do.

“Racing-wise, there’s very little. There’s the Pendil at Kempton, which is a fortnight yesterday and over two and a half miles, which I don’t really want to do. The whole point of running at Newbury against the older horses was so he could get the experience at somebody else’s speed, not his.

“They have put on a race at Bangor two days after Kempton over two miles, but that is awful close to Cheltenham and you could only see him going round on his own if he did do that. We can do that at home or hopefully by borrowing racecourses.

“He had an antibiotic on Friday night. Yesterday he’d gone two steps forward and we’ve lost one of those steps this morning, but that’s the way it is and we can only play it as it is.

“We’ve got the water treadmill and he loves playing in that, so we can keep him moving and we’re still very optimistic that everything will be fine. There’s no damage done, so we’ll keep you posted.”