With Barbers Shop a creditable fourth in the Hennessy Gold Cup, Nicky Henderson now has ides of running him at the William Hill King George VI chase. Despite the going being softer than they would have liked, Barbers Shop and Barry Geraghty managed to put in a good performance and now eyes may turn to the King George VI..
When questioned, Henderson replied that they had still not formally decided if Barbers Shop would be running in the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day. However he did state that with Punchestowns fine debut jumping exhibition at Newbury on Friday, there is a chance that he would be running at Feltham Novices’ Chase and the two miles and five furlongs race at Cheltenham.
However amidst all this glory and satisfaction, Henderson appeared noticeably puzzled by the lackluster performance of Binocular in the WBX.com Fighting Fifth Hurdle held at Newcastle on Saturday. He thinks that there may be more pertinent reasons to his performance than the pace, which didn’t appear to unsettle Binocular until late on.
In my view Binocular was actually traveling well until the second last flight, where he fell under pressure and could not deliver his trademark performance under the stewardship of Tony McCoy. So Henderson thinks that lack of space wasn’t the sole reason for Binocular’s performance, and that they had to find out what actually happened.  The investigation continues.