Sandown loss has Bino team thinking
Connections of Binocular will have to go back to the drawing board after the abandonment of Saturday's card at Sandown.
The 2010 Champion Hurdle winner was set to take in the Contenders Hurdle as part of his preparation for next month's Cheltenham Festival, a Listed prize he has secured for the past two seasons.
But with the fixture beaten by the cold snap, Nicky Henderson will have to find his classy hurdler an alternative prep race in the next week or two.
The Red Mills Hurdle at Gowran Park in Ireland, the Kingwell Hurdle at Wincanton and the Morebattle Hurdle at Kelso are all potential destinations.
Frank Berry, racing manager for owner JP McManus, said: "As it stands at the moment, I don't know where he'll run. We're going to have to wait and see what happens with the weather. We have a few options, but we can't say for definite which way he's going yet. The weather is going to be important."
Tomorrow's meeting at Sandown was abandoned due to a frozen track. Clerk of the course Andrew Cooper inspected at 8am and was forced to call off the meeting.
The track has been covered earlier in the week to give the meeting every chance of going ahead. However, the covers failed to beat a series of cold nights and Cooper admitted it had not been too tough a decision.
He said: "It's disappointing but I think, to be fair, we probably knew it was going to be an uphill battle at the close of play on Thursday.
"It dropped to minus 4C overnight, but the wind chill has also dropped, so in a way it's not really any worse than it was. We are frozen in places, despite the covers being down, and it was a relatively straightforward decision.
"We're expecting to go up to 2C today, but it won't be enough. From where were are now, we need to be hitting 5C or 6C in this time scale."
3 February 2012
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