Nicky Henderson retains faith in Jeriko Du Reponet after Sandown flop

A winner of his first three starts over hurdles, Jeriko Du Reponet pulled up at the Cheltenham Festival when Nicky Henderson's stable was under a cloud.

Set to make his seasonal return and chase debut under top-weight in the Boodles Novices' Limited Handicap Chase, he was made the 8/11 favourite despite keeping his three rivals waiting at the start leading to the race going off 10 minutes after post time.

After the race, Henderson spoke to Racing TV and explained the cause for the delay, saying: "That was strange, very strange.

"To saddle today, you'd have thought we were trying to break in a lion, it was crazy and that was totally out of character. We then had to take him back out of the saddling boxes and the vet looked at him and listened to him and then checked him again at the start and I said to Nico [de Boinville], if you are not happy when you get down there don’t take any risks.

"As soon as he [De Boinville] got on him, no probs, back to normal and everything was normal. He was good to go and we'd walked the ground and were happy with that, everything was good about from pre-saddling."

It wasn't all good once the race was under way though with Jeriko Du Reponet making an extraordinary jump at the ditch in front of the stands before a bad mistake at the last of the Railway Fences led Nico de Boinville to pull his mount up shortly after.

"The first ditch was... Altior used to do that at that ditch every time. It's just one of those things," Henderson continued.

"They see ditches at home, it's probably a bigger white rail and it's 'oh help, what do I do here?' and consequently you get that enormous, great balloon which he was quite clever to survive.

"Then Nico said he started to warm back up. Warming up, warming up, warming up all the way down the back and started to get the jumping going until he got to the last of The Railways and Nico said, honestly, you'll need to see it to believe it, he just slipped from yards out straight into the fence and quite rightly, in my opinion, he pulled him up. You can't take a chance with the horse but he wasn't going to win at that point anyway; confidence by then had had two serious shocks and he wasn't ready for another one."

Henderson still believes that Jeriko Du Reponet can make his mark over fences but he will have to wait a while longer to be pitched back into graded company with a possible target of the Henry VIII Novices' Chase on the back-burner.

"He's a very, very good horse," he said.

"I really, seriously believe if he'd cantered round today we'd be talking about coming back here for the Henry the whatever. Don't think we'll do that this time, we've just got to go and regroup. He's done everything right at home; schooled beautifully, had a gallop at Newbury, fantastic.

"He's done absolutely nothing wrong at all and has jumped beautifully the whole way through but there you go. We can always get surprised and fooled and he's done that to us today in every sense.

"He's pulled up completely sound; heart's in order and all that sort of thing. It's a bizarre chapter of circumstances. I'm sorry but nobody is more disappointed than our team is going to be and we have to learn to accept these things and we've got to correct them and we will."

More from Sporting Life

• Racecards
• Fast results
• Full results and free video replays
• Horse racing news
• Horse racing tips
• Horse racing features
• Download our free iOS and Android app
• Football and other sports tips
• Podcasts and video content

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.