Upbeat report on L'Ami despite reverse Nicky Henderson is "not ruling anything out" for L'Ami Serge despite his surprise defeat at Warwick on Saturday. The Seven Barrows trainer reported the six-year-old to be "very perky" on Sunday morning and was at a loss to explain his under-par display in the Kingmaker Novices' Chase. Sent off 1-5 favourite to beat two rivals, he ran way below form and was beaten 11 lengths by Violet Dancer, which appears to have damaged his prospects for the Cheltenham Festival. However, Henderson dismissed reports that L'Ami Serge would definitely miss the Racing Post Arkle Trophy, for which he was pushed out from 7-1 second favourite to as big as 16-1. He also holds an engagement in the JLT Novices' Chase. "He is 100 per cent this morning. He was perfectly all right when we scoped him at the races yesterday," said Henderson. "He's sound as a pound this morning and we will have to try to find out what went wrong, because it did. "He was never comfortable at any stage. Obviously it was pretty horrendous ground but he has run on soft ground before, he has run in heavy ground, and it's not been a worry. "He schooled on Thursday and he was electric. His work has been brilliant and he just didn't turn up on Saturday. I do not know why. We will check him out tomorrow. "The only thing I would emphasise is that we are not ruling the Arkle out, we are not ruling anything out. I certainly wouldn't rule out the Arkle but if there was a forfeit for the JLT tomorrow we would leave him in that as well. "We scoped him at the races and he was 100 per cent clean. He's sound and very perky this morning. You wouldn't know he'd been anywhere and this horse all week has been in fantastic form. "Daryl (Jacob) schooled him on Thursday and you will never see a horse jump better, but that horse didn't jump yesterday. Whether it was ground or what, I don't know. "We've got to sort it out, we've got to see where we are."
