Nicky Henderson Cheltenham Q and A: "I'd train Facile Vega!"

Before we paid a visit to Seven Barrows this week, we asked our followers on Twitter to send in any questions they had for Nicky Henderson relating to the Cheltenham Festival, and it is fair to say he provided some interesting answers to the ones we chose!

Racing TV presenter Jess Stafford was on hand to ask Henderson a number of the best questions that were sent in to us, including which horse Henderson would like to train that is currently in Willie Mullins’ yard, and one of the questions may have even persuaded Henderson to run a potential Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle contender in a handicap instead!

Watch the full video below plus read more on Nicky Henderson's Cheltenham Festival contenders here.

I Am Maximus will go to the Cheltenham Festival and at the moment we are thinking about the Ballymore. However, I do agree that his rating of 134 is probably quite kind to him, it’s a good point. I think he is a chaser in the making. He is probably one year off his peak, but he is a lovely horse.

Walking On Air would be pretty close [in terms of ability to Constitution Hill and Jonbon]. He might just lack the gear. His dam, Refinement, stayed three miles, so it is a stamina-laden pedigree, and I would think that is where his strength is. He won over two miles at Newbury, but he was doing all his best work at the end. He fits into the two and a half-mile category with the other two going two miles.

I haven’t worked Constitution Hill and Jonbon together. I haven’t been tempted to do it because I think it would be easy for them to do too much. I have no intention of doing so.

I hope Allart is OK. We won’t see him this season. He had a horrible accident in the summer whilst he was away. Nobody knows what he did, but he hit his head and fractured his skull. We feared it had affected his brain. He has been into training, I thought he was going quite well at some stage, but then it went wrong again. His co-ordination wasn’t correct. He has gone to Ireland, has surgery in his back and is recuperating in Ireland with every intention to try again next season. He is a very talented horse. This was a freak injury.

That's what we are all hoping and praying for [that Buzz makes Cheltenham next year].So far, so good with Buzz. It has been a great recovery and it was just the cruellest fate literally the day before the Long Walk. It was going to be his first try at three miles, he had been ferociously impressive over two and a half miles and he also won the Cesarewitch. We were getting that excited, but he then fractured his pelvis. He has been a brilliant patient. We and the vets are just very hopeful that he’ll be back for next season.

The obvious one is to take Energumene out as I could do anything with both him and Shishkin and it takes away the danger! He would then probably beat me with Chacun Pour Soi. Sir Gerhard and Dysart Dynamo yes – that is where his strength is going to be.

I know which one I'd have, though...Facile Vega! The bumper horse out of Quevega – I’ll have that please...sorry Willie!

It’s lovely to have the offspring of mares that you used to train. Verdana Blue for example she is in foal and she’ll be a great breeder. With Quevega, there is an amazing show in France and we were out there with the likes of David Minton and others. We had gone out to this show in a place called Decize. There were about 30 or 40 foals and mares and they were all shown and then you could go and try and buy them privately off the breeder. We bought one useless animal who we thought was beautiful at the time.

However, if you had any sort of brain, you would have bought the whole lot, because you would have got Sprinter Sacre and Quevega as they were both there as foals on the day. Sprinter Sacre got bought by somebody and was on a French stud. David Minton then bought the whole stock in a job lot dispersal sale of 22 horses.

It was amazing how last year it was all about Irish point-to-pointers with Shishkin, Honeysuckle, Minella Indo and there were so many. It just seems that the pendulum had swung from France back to Ireland, because it always used to be Ireland. We just want it to swing from Ireland to England.