A LOT of water has flowed under the bridge since Sprinter Sacre’s emotionally charged Champion Chase success in 2016, and even more since See You Then won his third Champion Hurdle three decades ago, but plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as our Gallic cousins would say.

Despite many changes to the fabric of National Hunt racing, and the waxing and waning of fortunes for his rivals for the title of champion trainer, the show goes on inexorably at Seven Barrows, with each champion lost replaced by another of similar talent.

Whether See You Then deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Persian War, or Istabraq whom he sandwiched as a three-time Champion Hurdler is one for the taproom bores, but he represented the making of Nicky Henderson as a great trainer, not only because of his domination, but the obvious difficulty of training him, with a vicious temper less of an obstacle than legs like glass.

Henderson handled the horse with brilliance, and his reputation for conditioning a top-class jumper has never dimmed.

Move the clock forward to November 2016, when Henderson fought back the emotion to announce the retirement of horse of a lifetime Sprinter Sacre, only to lose another superstar in the shape of Simonsig a couple of hours later.

DISTRESS

To see his distress would make anyone wonder whether he had the heart to continue almost 40 years after he was first issue a licence to train.

The pressure of being expected to produce winners at the highest level must be spectacular, and while some may be able to treat the job of racehorse trainer as a simple business proposition, Henderson’s great appeal as a person is the extent to which he is attached emotionally to the horses he trains, with every glorious victory, every bitter loss, and every gut-wrenching setback reflected in his wide-eyed features.

It was easy to view his forlorn figure on that November day at Cheltenham and wonder whether he’d have the strength to start again.

More fool us who doubted the intestinal fortitude of the multiple champion, far less his ability.

STRONGER

Two years on from that gut-wrenching day, Nicky Henderson is going stronger than ever, and has in his care two of the warmest favourites imaginable for the much anticipated Cheltenham Festival. Altior beat all before him in the two-mile chase division last year, and has brought his unbeaten record over obstacles to a remarkable 15 races, the most recent when too strong for Un De Sceaux and Saint Calvados in the Tingle Creek at Sandown.

While he still lags behind Sprinter Sacre’s peak Timeform rating, his defeat of Min at Cheltenham in March was as good as anything his former stablemate achieved in his final campaign, and his strength from the final obstacle is a remarkable sight to behold, which suggests that he could be hard to beat for some time, and quotes of 8/11 for a repeat win in March look more than fair.

It is frightening to think that one yard could produce two such outstanding chasers in the same mould in such a timeframe, and calls to mind the joke about London buses; you wait a lifetime for a horse like Sprinter Sacre, and then two come along at once.

Buveur D’Air, like Altior, is a red-hot favourite to reprise his Cheltenham Festival role, and is not easy to oppose as he bids to land his own hat-trick of Champion Hurdle wins. Beaten by Altior in the Supreme Novices’ in 2015, he’s unbeaten otherwise over obstacles, and had no trouble putting Samcro to the sword in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle.

Like See You Then, people have been reluctant to lavish praise on him as he’s not been tested away from Cheltenham. His Newcastle win was the first time he’d started odds against since winning his first Champion Hurdle in 2017, beating stablemate My Tent Or Yours, as he did in the Aintree Hurdle next.

That horse deserves a mention, having finished second in three Champion Hurdles and a Supreme, and it’s a measure of Nicky Henderson that his tribute to ‘My Tent’ on the horse’s recent retirement was as heartfelt as if he had won all those races.