Nicky Henderson: “A watching brief may be advised with our first few runners”

I AM delighted to be returning to write my blogs for Unibet and after a long summer I’ve been itching to get the season started. We worked on the grass for the first time last Saturday and I don’t mind admitting I was a little bit surprised as I thought most of them were pretty forward but as it turned out they all had a good blow afterwards so perhaps they are not as fit as I thought, so a watching brief may be advised with our first few runners.

The guys from Unibet came down and did some filming last week so keep your eyes peeled for all of the latest news on Altior, Buveur D’Air, Pentland Hills, Fusil Raffles, Santini, Champ and the rest of the squad. We have several exciting recruits to the novice chase ranks and some lovely youngsters set to go novice hurdling so there is hopefully plenty to look forward to.

Just a handful of runners this weekend and my thoughts on their chances are below:

 

CHELTENHAM

 

4:55 Novices’ Chase

Pym (Nico de Boinville)

We’ve given him plenty of time so he’s very lightly raced but hopefully he can go quite a long way chasing. I’m not normally a fan of running horses first time out over fences at Cheltenham as it’s a big ask, but his schooling has been excellent and I had a chat with Nico so we decided to come here as we have a lot of novices which we need to get out so this is a fine starting point and I’m looking forward to getting him out.

 

5:30 Bumper

Time Flies By (Barry Geraghty)

He’s a very nice son of Getaway who is related to Celestial Halo so is certainly bred to be winning races. We were going to go straight over hurdles with him but he’s still a little bit green so we decided to give him a run in a bumper for experience so he’ll definitely improve for the education, but he’s certainly one for the future.

Short clip on #BuveurDair. Full piece if you click the link. https://t.co/CHdsQNhp1Q @UnibetRacing #ad pic.twitter.com/HfXlOzlBCx

— Nicky Henderson (@sevenbarrows) October 24, 2019

 

SUNDAY

 

We’ve got a couple runners at Wincanton on Sunday and Torolight makes his hurdles debut in the 3:20 but will need it as will Du Destin in the 1:00 but I am looking forward to running Corrany for Trevor Hemming’s in the Maiden Hurdle (12:40) at Aintree and I think he’ll go very close.