Starluck ready for Fighting Fifth Hurdle but not go for Go Native
Nicky Henderson may have his sights trained on one objective with Binocular, which is to win the Stan James Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham next March, but Alan Fleming is not looking that far ahead.
Henderson may be preparing for the core part of the jumps season with a yard that has wall-to-wall Festival material but Fleming has to cut his cloth according to the slightly less plush fabric at his yard at Beare Green in Surrey. Starluck is the stable star and will be starting his third season over hurdles with the Grade One stanjames.com ‘Fighting Fifth’ Hurdle, at Newcastle in November, a possible early-season target.
One of the leading juvenile hurdlers two seasons ago, Starluck suffered from what amounts to “second-season syndrome” last term. Having kicked off with a win at Cheltenham in October Starluck then finished second at Haydock, where the soft ground may have been against him, and then ran Go Native to a short-head in the Grade One Christmas Hurdle at Kempton in December.
His only other win came back at Kempton, in an all-weather race on the Flat that was his prep for the Champion Hurdle, where he finished 12 lengths fifth to Binocular.
It was a case of hard-won experience for both horse and trainer Fleming believes that it can be put to good use this time around. “At this moment, we are looking at the ‘Fighting Fifth’ Hurdle and then the Christmas Hurdle but we have no plan yet as to where he will run before that,” Fleming said. “He just got touched off in the Christmas Hurdle last year and then ran a cracker at Cheltenham against experienced horses, so we are looking for him to just get a little bit better this season.
“If all goes well and he can continue to prove his ability to mix it with the best, we would hope to make it to the Champion Hurdle. There are some very good novices coming through from last year so we will have to see where we are against them.
“He was a four-year-old at the start of last season and hopefully he can improve a bit this season. It was a respectable enough run in the Champion Hurdle. He had Celestial Halo and Zaynar quite close to him, so he wasn’t out of his depth - he was holding his own.”
Another’s year’s development will have strengthened the gelding and Fleming hopes that he will be less at the mercy of the winter ground this season. “At Kempton he handled softer ground better last year than he would have done as a juvenile, so we are hoping he will get stronger and deal with it better as he gets older,” he explained. “He had a great time through the summer and looks stronger than he did last year. He is in real good fettle now so we are looking forward to cracking on with him.
“Starluck is a special horse for us and probably just didn’t put everything together last season. He was probably a little bit unlucky to get beat at Haydock and a little bit unlucky to get beat in the Christmas Hurdle. Then we couldn’t run him in the race we wanted to before the Champion Hurdle. I do think he is a more together horse this season.”
Few horses appeared to have put their form together better last season than Go Native. Victories in the ‘Fighting Fifth’ and Christmas Hurdle put Noel Meade’s horse in line for a £1million bonus if he had won the Champion Hurdle. But a mistake at the second flight put paid to his chances and the leg injury that he sustained is likely to keep him off the track until mid-season. “The ‘Fighting Fifth Hurdle’ is certainly not on the agenda because when he ran in the Champion Hurdle he injured his lower cannon bone and spent quite a bit of the summer recuperating,” Meade explained. “That meant he was late going out to grass, so he was late coming back in and he probably won’t be ready this side of Christmas.
“The vets are very happy with him at the moment and seem to think he has made a full recovery. I just wanted to give him a break because he had been in for quite a long time and I felt if we put him back in training and went on from there we might not get through the whole season.
“It’s too early to say at this stage where we will start him off. Hopefully, we’ll be there at Cheltenham for the Champion Hurdle - that’s the target.”
For entirely different reasons to Henderson, Meade has to take the long-range view.
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