Denman's trainer Paul Nicholls and owner Paul Barber will get their heads together later in the year to decide how the great liver chestnut should best spend his retirement.
The 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner's recovery from injury has not advanced enough for him to parade at Newbury on Saturday ahead of the race newly named in his honour, but he was still able to play some part in the promotion of the Berkshire track's crucial afternoon.
Newbury have chosen Walking With The Wounded as their charity for the weekend and Denman emerged gingerly from his stable next door to Kauto Star in Ditcheat, Somerset, in order to pose for pictures with Karl Hinett and Jaco van Gass.
The two servicemen were injured when in active duty for the Staffordshire Regiment and Parachute Regiment respectively and will be part of a nine-man team attempting to scale the summit of Mount Everest this year. Prince Harry is to join the squad on Saturday and sponsors Betfair have named a hurdle in their honour.
Denman enjoys huge popularity in the jumping world but nowhere more so than at Newbury, where he produced a phenomenal weight-carrying effort to win his second Hennessy Gold Cup in 2009. The horse known as 'The Tank' had to be retired before Christmas when suffering a setback on the gallops and the old Aon Chase is now named after him.
"Paul and I haven't made much of a plan and we'll probably decide in the summer," said Nicholls.
"It was quite a bad leg injury and I imagine both he and Master Minded (the dual Champion Chaser who seriously hurt himself in the King George) will have a year off first.
"There's plenty of time left for him to do something else and Paul's daughter-in-law is the master of a local hunt, so hunting is an option for him. What people forget is that it's very difficult for a horse going from a five-star hotel to just being out in a field and it isn't always easy to put horses into other jobs. But we'll do what's right for him."
