Nicky Henderson is praying this weekend's huge fixture at Newbury goes ahead to give some of his stable stars a crucial run before next month's Cheltenham Festival.
The Seven Barrows handler is set to saddle Cheltenham Gold Cup hero Long Run in the Betfair Denman Chase, while one of the most exciting novice chasers in training, Sprinter Sacre, will be looking to gain further racecourse experience in the Betfair Super Saturday Chase. With Darlan in line for the Betfair Hurdle, the most lucrative handicap hurdle in Europe, it promises to be a massive day for the Henderson team, and the trainer does not even want to contemplate the fixture being off.
"It doesn't even bare thinking about," he said.
Should the meeting join the several other National Hunt cards that have fallen by the wayside this week, Henderson is hoping the British Horseracing Authority will step in to reschedule the major events.
He said: "You would have to hope they would seriously consider putting on a race such as this (Denman Chase), and the Game Spirit (Super Saturday Chase), because without them these horses haven't got a race between now and Cheltenham. You would hope there is going to be flexibility if Newbury can't happen on Saturday. The hurdle race is one thing - it's a handicap. But the Denman Chase and the Game Spirit are genuine prep races for championship races."
Henderson is also on the lookout for suitable opportunities for hurdling stars Oscar Whisky and Binocular. Both missed engagements last weekend because of the weather and Oscar Whisky could run in a 'jumpers' bumper' at Kempton on Friday, should the scheduled turf fixture fall.
Henderson told At The Races: "He's in very good form and I haven't ruled it out yet. I would consider running as I don't really want him having a hard race and there is nowhere else to go. I'm running out of options for him and he's not a horse I'm desperate to run. He's 99.9% to go for the World Hurdle (at Cheltenham). Binocular is our biggest problem and we're summing up the options. There is the Morebattle Hurdle at Kelso next week, but you're talking about a journey in uncertain conditions."
This week's major action aside, Henderson said he needed a break in the weather to get further experience to the members of his Cheltenham-bound team.
He added: "There are novice hurdlers and novice chasers that need runs and the other thing that is very shortly going to become a horrible problem is the deadline for the handicaps is coming up. For the novices, you have to have three runs and a lot of them are sitting on two. You need to have a third run and we haven't got long to go. You need to run them in the next 10 days and there is going to be some fiercely competitive races.
"I've got four or five that genuinely have to have another run in order to qualify and we won't be running two in races, we'll be running threes and fours if we're not careful. You could spend hours looking at the programme book and it doesn't become any easier. Finding the options is going to be difficult."
