Twenty-five years after his second
National Hunt trainers’ championship success, the 2012/13 jumps
season saw the popular, ruddy-faced Nicky Henderson back at the top
of the tree after ending a run of seven successive seasons with the
title for his arch-rival Paul Nicholls.
But Henderson – whose only major
omission from his career CV is that elusive Aintree
Grand National victory – is not just a jumps trainer
and has proved himself well capable of taking on the best of the Flat
handlers on their own turf, his win with Forgotten Voice at Royal
Ascot this summer reminded everyone in the game just how astute the
Master of Seven Barrows is.
At Newmarket on October 12, Henderson
will be out to bag his third Cesarewitch Handicap in just 10 years,
his Lieutenant Miller look to have leading claims and appearing to
have been targeted at the marathon two-and-a-quarter-mile contest
from an early stage this season.
Well supported in recent weeks down
from 16/1 to a general offer of 12/1 with betfair
online, the winning hurdler stays really well on the
Flat and won nicely off a mark of 79 in a 17-furlong Doncaster
handicap earlier in the season.
It was in defeat, however, that he
really threw his hat into the Cesarewitch ring, the gelded son of
Beat All running a brave race to be a close
third to Well Sharp in the Ascot Stakes at the royal
meeting in June, before failing by an agonising half-length to hold
off Broxbourne in the two-mile-five-furlong Goodwood Stakes off a
rising mark of 88.
A further rise in the weights to a new
rating of 91 looks fair, and with Henderson’s fine record in the
big Newmarket event it would be a brave man who will bet that
Lieutenant Miller will not make the first four in what is always a
tremendous spectacle on the Rowley Mile course.