The Leader Newspaper
By Andrew Atkinson
Altior has been withdrawn from the Queen Mother Champion Chase on day two at the Cheltenham Festival on Wednesday after trainer Nicky Henderson revealed the chaser had returned an unsatisfactory scope.
âWe are very sorry that we have taken the difficult decision not to run Altior in the Champion Chase. He coughed after exercise which caused us to scope him and as a result of what we have seen it would not be sensible to run him.
âThis is devastating for all of us, and Altiorâs owners Pat and Christopher Pugh in particular, in that this is the second year running we have had to pull him out at the last minute,” said Henderson.
UPDATED 7:24PM, MAR 15 2021
Altior has been ruled out of Wednesday s Grade 1 Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase at the eleventh hour after Nicky Henderson reported he returned an unsatisfactory scope on Monday morning.
The 11-year-old, who won in 2018 and 2019, was withdrawn on the morning of the race last year after failing to recover from a setback. Altior had been available at 6-1 generally for this year s running.
Speaking to the Racing Post, Henderson said: It s very upsetting. At least he told us, which is something. If we d run him, well, it just doesn t bear thinking about. We ve got the figures back from the laboratory and they tell their own tale.
Get the inside scoop: three virtual Cheltenham Festival preview nights not to be missed horseandhound.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from horseandhound.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Arran Banner
Want to read more?
At the start of the pandemic in March we took the decision to make online access to our news free of charge by taking down our paywall. At a time where accurate information about Covid-19 was vital to our community, this was the right decision – even though it meant a drop in our income. In order to help safeguard the future of our journalism, the time has now come to reinstate our paywall,
However,
rest assured that access to all Covid related news will still remain free. To access all other news will require a subscription, as it did pre-pandemic.
Grand National 2021 date confirmed amid calls to change Aintree festival Mirror 25/02/2021 UP NEXT
The 2021 Randox Grand National will remain in its original slot, despite calls from bookmakers to stage it when betting shops are back in business.
It has been confirmed that the world famous Aintree marathon, set to feature Tiger Roll s historic hat-trick bid, will be run on April 10.
That date is two days before High Street bookies are allowed to reopen under step two of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s roadmap to ease coronavirus restrictions on April 12.
Dickon White, who runs the Randox Grand National Festival at Aintree Racecourse as The Jockey Club’s North West Regional Director, said: This has been a really difficult time for the retail and on-course betting industry and we very much hope that retail outlets will re-open on Monday 12 April, but like so much in this pandemic, this is far from certain at this stage.