It says much for the extent to which Cheltenham dominates the National Hunt landscape that the most talked about performance prior to this year’s Festival did not come in a race at all.
It is the morning of February 27, a fortnight out exactly from the start of the sport’s biggest Jumps meeting, and leading trainer Nicky Henderson is putting a number of his Festival hopefuls through their final paces in a gallop open to the media at Kempton Park. As two of his horses stride clear up the run-in, worried eyes are trained back up the straight towards a labouring third.
