Henderson hoping history does not repeat with Crystal Island Nicky Henderson acknowledges it goes against his judgement to start Crystal Island off over fences at Cheltenham after a similar tactic with Might Bite backfired 11 years ago. But given the Lambourn trainer has got more right than wrong in a glittering career, plenty of punters looking for clues ahead of the WKD Novices’ Limited Handicap Chase may well take the hint. Crystal Island comes into it unbeaten after wins in an Irish point-to-point at and novice hurdles at Ascot and Ffos Las – a point Henderson is happy to put a full stop on at this stage of his jumping career. “He’s interesting, he only ran twice over hurdles last season and won them both well,” said Henderson. “We’re launching him over fences against Henderson’s better judgement of not starting them off over fences at Cheltenham. “It’s something we did with Might Bite (in November 2015 after two wins over hurdles) and I said I would never do it again as it frightened him to death and we had to put him back to hurdles for a whole season before trying again. “He would go on to win a Brown Advisory, a King George and finish second in a Gold Cup, so he got there. But it did take him a while to get over that first experience.” Crystal Island will have his fencing technique well tested with Four Springs (Ben Pauling), The Gray Ghost (Robbie Llewellyn) and Captain Cool (Jennie Candlish) winners over fences already. In addition Spectacularsunrise (Nigel and Willy Twiston-Davies) and Turndlightsdownlow (Martin Keighley) were both running good races at the October meeting before last fence mishaps. Keighley, whose contender unseated at the last upsides impressive winner Butch Cassidy, fancies his chances of getting on the scoreboard. “Turndlightsdownlow is in very good form and none the worse for that last fence unseat. It was just unlucky and Freddie (Keighley) said he hadn’t really gone for everything and felt he would have gone very close,” he said. “He had two horses rated over 140 more than 15 lengths behind him jumping that last and while in previous times he might have gone up a lot for that instead he could be very well handicapped.” Harry Cobden has been the go-to man for the Listed Three Counties Christmas Open National Hunt Flat Race in recent years, winning three of the last five runnings of the concluding race on Sunday’s card. And the jockey joins up with trainer Tom Cooper 12 months on from their success with Saint Clovis when riding impressive Listowel bumper scorer New Grange. Cooper, who saddled a winner on Friday, said: “New Grange is a nice horse – a real galloper. A bit of rain coming in Sunday morning might help, but he is a gross horse and will improve for his first run back without a doubt.” Powerful stables are well represented in a race in which Willie Mullins runs Listowel bumper winner Berkstar, Dan Skelton fields two with impressive Worcester winner Dundee Law and winning pointer Micky Haller and in-form Jamie Snowden runs Cameron Di Fiacre.
