Sprinter Sacre, who has not seen a racecourse since being pulled up with an irregular heartbeat at Kempton Park 11 months ago, will miss his intended seasonal debut in the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown Park on Saturday week, Nicky Henderson, the trainer of the brilliant 2013 Cheltenham Festival Champion Chase winner, said here on Thursday.
Simonsig, another of Henderson’s stable stars, has been ruled out of the Peterborough Chase at Huntingdon the same afternoon and is doubtful for the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day, while the trainer has also scratched Sign Of A Victory and Hadrian’s Approach from major targets at Newcastle and Newbury this weekend.
Henderson has a 24% strike rate so far this season, but the steady stream of winners that usually emerges from his stable in October and November has failed to materialise in the latest campaign. On Monday, he saddled three beaten odds-on favourites at Kempton, and the news that several of his biggest names will miss scheduled targets will add to the sense of a yard that is struggling to find its familiar, dominant form.
The disclosure that Sprinter Sacre will miss the Tingle Creek Chase on 6 December was not entirely unexpected, as Henderson had warned this week that the eight-year-old might need a racecourse gallop to be fit enough for the Grade One event.
“It’s because of the ground as much as anything and he’s not quite ready,” Henderson said. “You wouldn’t run him in this ground anyway and I’d rather bide my time. He did two canters this morning and will do tomorrow and then we’ll decide whether to do a bit more with him on Saturday.
“He wouldn’t be in training if we didn’t think we were going to get there. He will be out tomorrow morning, he’s in full exercise and work [but] we’re not taking any chances and we’re not going to push him through something.
“You can’t force it to happen. If we push it wheels will fall off these horses. He’s nearly there, but you’ve got to be 100%. You can tell, that’s our job, and if you can’t notice the difference between 100% and 95, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Henderson remains confident that Sprinter Sacre will not suffer a recurrence of the heart problem which resulted in the chaser losing his unbeaten record over fences when he was pulled up midway through the Desert Orchid Chase at Kempton on 27 December.
“He had a four-day full MOT [with leading equine cardiologist Celia Marr] in in Newmarket and everything is tickety-boo,” Henderson said. “Nobody wants to see him [back on the racecourse] more than we do [but] there aren’t many options for him. There’s the Victor Chandler [now Clarence House Chase at Ascot in January] and the Desert Orchid [at Kempton in December] which would be the next possible one for him. We’ll keep everyone posted on where we are.”
Henderson said he could now run Oscar Whisky in the Tingle Creek, a race which had been billed as a mid-season meeting between Sprinter Sacre and Sire De Grugy, the horse who replaced him as the two-mile Champion Chaser. Following Gary Moore’s confirmation last week that Sire De Grugy will miss the rest of 2014 with an injury, however, the race has now lost both of its star attractions in the space of a week.
Simonsig, the winner of seven of his eight starts over fences but unraced since winning the Arkle Trophy in excellent style at Cheltenham in March 2013, is out to 9-1 in a place for the King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, having been favourite with several firms less than a week ago.
“He’s not going to get to the Peterborough,” Henderson said. “It would be a tall order [to go straight to the King George] but I can’t say no he won’t. But it would be a lot to ask him to miss a season and come straight into a three-mile chase having never been three miles in his life before.
“It’s frustrating because he had been in really good order. He’s missed 10 days, and he’s being ridden again now. It’s nothing to do with what he had before, which was a splint on a near-fore and he appeared to be a little bit lame behind. He’s always a horse that you have to be very careful with his whole constitution, he wouldn’t be the most robust and if you bully him, you can push him the wrong way very quickly.
“I’m dead keen on [starting at] two-and-a-half for Simonsig with a view to stepping him up to three. Bobs Worth [the 2013 Gold Cup winner] is in work as well, but I think we’ll have to go straight to the Lexus [Chase at Leopardstown on 28 December, which he won last season]. I don’t mind, I think we could still go to a racecourse [gallop] with him, and we could go to a racecourse with Sprinter.”
Henderson has also decided that both Sign Of A Victory, a leading candidate for the Grade One Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on Saturday, and Hadrian’s Approach, who had been around 10-1 for the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury the same afternoon, will both miss their engagements due to soft ground.
“The ground is finding us out a lot,” Henderson said. “The reason we’ve had five times more winners than anyone else at Kempton is because our horses go on good ground. That was as bad as it’s ever been [on Monday], and they’re just not ready for it.
“We ran Sign Of A Victory once here [at Newbury] in soft ground and he hated it. The horse is 101%. He could go to the Ladbroke [Hurdle at Ascot in December] but the ground has to dry up, and Hadrian’s [Approach] is much the same. You can go through a whole list of them.”
Willie Mullins, Ireland’s champion trainer, suffered a setback of his own on Thursday when Un De Sceaux, who had been backed from 1-4 to 1-8 to make a successful chasing debut at Thurles, fell at the third-last fence when apparently needing only to stand up to record an easy victory. Both the horse and Ruby Walsh, his jockey, were unhurt.
“He came out of it well and is grand apart from one little cut which any horse can get,” Mullins said. “I was very happy with him prior to the fall and it was just one of those things and it was a novicey mistake. I just hope he won’t make a habit of it.”
There was a odds-on setback for punters in the main race at Newbury too, as Alan King’s Carraig Mor, at 2-1, beat the 4-11 favourite Southfield Theatre in the Grade Two Worcester Novice Chase. A clumsy jump at the last ended Southfield Theatre’s chance of victory just as he seemed to be mounting a significant challenge, allowing Carraig Mor and Noel Fehily to record a one-and-a-quarter length success.
