Sky Bet Supreme Novices Hurdle (Grade 1)

IN a titanic curtain raiser, Shishkin showed the sort of qualities that belong to only the elite as he edged out Abacadabras in a titanic conclusion which showed the first two lie some way ahead of their contemporaries in the two-mile novices’ division.

Just hours after he was forced to rule out Altior from defending his Queen Mother crown Nicky Henderson received the considerable compensation of moving on to the 65-winner mark at the Festival and he did so with a horse who overcame major adversity. Aside from trouble in running Shiskin was also notably weak in the betting as the Marie Donnelly-owned son of Sholokhov, who was 5/2 favourite for this race a week previously, had drifted out to 6/1 by the time the Festival opener got underway.

The race itself was anything but plain sailing for Shiskin who made a mistake at the first flight down the back. He was then scrubbed along as the runners made their descent for the straight and Nico de Boinville, who displayed patience and poise aplenty, then switched him wide to get into the clear.

This move nearly ended in disaster at the second last where Elixir D’Ainay made a mistake and simultaneously received a bump from Asterion Forlonge, who had jumped out to his right throughout. This put the former on the floor, brought down the strong travelling Captain Guinness and hampered the winner.

To his credit though Shiskin rallied and was in full flight approaching the last to join the strong travelling Abacadabras. The latter still led at the final flight and fought tooth and nail but in the bobbing finish the home hope got the verdict by a head. There was a yawning 11-length gap back to the third-placed Chantry House.

“It wasn’t a nice experience I can tell you. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and to be able to win after everything that went wrong he has to be a fantastic horse,” remarked the winning rider. “In terms of the future horses have a habit of telling you where to go after a summer and he’s still a very raw horse so I’d expect him to be a much more complete type next season.”

Meanwhile Henderson reflected: “We’ve run three lovely horses and they’ve all run well but Shishkin has those gears and he needed them to get out of the trouble he found himself in. He’s a lovely, lovely horse and he is a former winning point-to-pointer so maybe chasing is the way we might go with him and Chantry House.”