Might Bite shrugs off Cheltenham effort to gain compensation in style

There's more to winning championships than amassing a talented team and watching the prizes roll in. Ask Pep Guardiola.

Like the Manchester City manager juggling his resources at the end of a busy season, the key thing for a jumps trainer at this stage of the campaign is to judge which of his stars can manage one last fling.

But unlike Senor G, whose side have lost their last last three games and slid out of the Champions League, Nicky Henderson has got things spot-on this week.

After electing to wait for Sandown with Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Altior and ruling dual Champion Hurdle winner Buveur D'Air out of Aintree after a poor scope, he could have been excused for swerving the Grand National meeting with Might Bite too.

His once quirky chaser could scarcely have had a tougher race than when coming off second best in his epic duel with Native River in a memorable Cheltenham Gold Cup – and all seven horses who'd been placed in that race and then gone on to tackle the Betway Bowl here in the past decade had been beaten.

But Henderson is a man for horses rather than statistics and he was happy to let Might Bite take his chance.

It's a sign of a champion that they get the big decisions right and he moved even further clear in his bid to retain the trainers' title as his star three-miler bolted up to complete the second leg of a Grade 1 treble for the trainer on the first day of the Aintree meeting.

Far from showing the effects of his Gold Cup effort, he exuded vim and vigour throughout and came home a ready seven-length winner.

Betway Bowl result

"It was quite brave coming here," Henderson admitted afterwards. "Of course you have your doubts but they're here to race. All those who've ridden him have been very happy with him.

"You'd have thought he had a gruelling race at Cheltenham, there's no doubt he did, and I've always said I wanted to be mindful of him because you have to be careful with his head.

"To come back from the battle he had and do that was a fair credit to everybody. That jumping out there was an exhibition round, you won't see better."

Jockey Nico de Boinville added: "He was fantastic today. The governor and the boys at home have got him in some order to come back after that hard race at Cheltenham, to jump with such enthusiasm.

"He was so fresh and well he was a pleasure to ride. I was thinking 'you need a fresh horse round here with this soft ground' but he was full of life with loads of spark to him."

Four-time Grade 1 winner Might Bite could start to rival Sprinter Sacre in the affections of trainer and jockey if he keeps this up and Henderson said: "To look at he's in Sprinter's league for sex appeal and he's starting to have a fair bit on the racecourse as well. I love him because he's never been straightforward, he's always tested us."

De Boinville added: "He's right up there, he's got that real touch of class you're always looking for."

The King George VI Chase winner could be given an extra chance to add more top-level successes to his CV in 2018-19 as the Betfair Chase at Haydock may be added to his programme.

"We've looked after him all this time so we might have to think about that," Henderson said. "Having run him today on soft ground that I don't think he likes you'd have to consider starting there if the ground is reasonable."

Might Bite was quoted at 25-1 for the Haydock/Kempton/Cheltenham triple crown by Paddy Power and his presence in the Betfair would make it much harder for Bristol De Mai to repeat his runaway 2017 success.

The front-running grey had no answer to the winner here and trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies said: "Everything was right today and there are no excuses. Well done them, they've got a better horse – we've got the third-best chaser in the country and that's not too bad."

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