Nicky Henderson has pulled Sir Gino, favourite for the JCB Triumph Hurdle, out of the Cheltenham Festival on Friday.
The impressive Trials Day winner, odds-on for the Triumph last week, was a 5/2 chance with most bookmakers on Thursday morning after a terrible week for Henderson, in which he had been forced to rule Constitution Hill, Jonbon and Shishkin out of the Festival, amongst others, after some poor runs from his representatives.
He's had six of his nine Festival runners pull up this week and is clearly not willing to risk his star juvenile hurdler under the cloud of his current stable form.
Henderson wrote on X: "Very sadly we have had to make a very tough decision which is not to run Sir Gino in the Triumph Hurdle tomorrow and the same applies to Shanagh Bob in the Albert Bartlett.
"Both horses appear to be in great shape but we cannot ignore the performance of all our horses throughout this week and indeed last week as well and we feel it would be crazy to chance it with two very high class young horses with their lives in front of them.
"Joe Donnelly who owns both of these as well as Shishkin, has been incredibly supportive as have all our owners as well as the media and indeed racing as a whole, and we appreciate that enormously.
"We are very much looking forward to hopefully Aintree and Punchestown as soon as we get the team back to normal."
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