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Connections of Star De Mohaison have warned that their five-year-old is not a guaranteed runner in the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup.

The gelding, trained by Paul Nicholls, is as short as 9-2 with VC Bet for the valuable staying handicap at Newbury on November 25 following his impressive win over hurdles at Cheltenham.

Last season's Royal & SunAlliance Chase hero made a highly-encouraging return to action on Saturday with an emphatic eight-length success.

Barry Simpson, racing manager to owner Sir Robert Ogden, was understandably delighted with that outcome but stressed no firm plan has yet been mapped out for the rest of the campaign.

'Obviously it's good to get a race in to him at this point in the season for wherever he goes next, but I haven't discussed that with Paul yet,' he explained.

'The Hennessy is a possibility but it depends what route Sir Robert wants to take.

'If we want to go for the King George then the Hennessy is probably not going to be the right race for him.

'We could go for a conditions race at Sandown on December 1st (Future Stars Steeple Chase) if we go down that route.

'If we want to go for the Hennessy then we will go straight there but that's still something for us to discuss,' he reiterated.

Simpson added: 'We had no real intention of running in it for a long time as he should have gone for the Charlie Hall ? that was his objective.

'But Paul had him in such good shape ? he kept saying he'd never had him better during the week ? and he did a fantastic piece of work so we needed to go somewhere with him.

'There wasn't really a race for him apart from this. Some people were saying he was a good thing and in hindsight he was.

'But I've seen a lot of horses go to races like that before and get beaten.

'You're never quite sure as sometimes when they've been chasing they don't manage to hurdle quite so easily but I have to say his hurdling technique was tremendous.'

(C) PA Sport