Henderson happy with Binocular Nicky Henderson was far from downcast despite Binocular only finishing third in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newbury. The champion hurdler failed to pick up when Peddlers Cross committed for home and finished in third place behind the Alan Fleming-trained Starluck. Henderson said: "He came there with his chance, blew up and he wasn't going to win. In fairness he wasn't knocked about after his chance had gone as there was no point. "If AP (McCoy) is happy so am I and he was happy afterwards. He jumped beautifully, he was slick, clean and quick. He's a big, burly horse at the moment and is probably finding his work a bit easy. "Of course we wanted to win, but fair play to the winner and second, they are good horses and we didn't underestimate them in any way. But March is March and that is what we are after. I'm not disturbed, if you take it in the context of last year's Fighting Fifth he was 100% better. "The Christmas Hurdle is the plan, which is why we wanted the race on today, and were so grateful to Newbury and everyone else involved for getting it on."
