'There's tons to come' - Nicky Henderson says Shishkin has so much more to give

Monday: Kempton

Shishkin is back but he can be so much better.

That was the bullish message delivered at Kempton by Nicky Henderson, whose words were filled with relief and a conviction that Britain's star two-mile chaser will improve hugely from his latest tour de force.

Speaking on Boxing Day afternoon, Henderson confessed he no longer wanted to run Shishkin in the Ladbrokes Desert Orchid Chase. He feared ground conditions would be overly testing for a horse who had not competed since April, yet he equally feared the reaction to any announcement of a further delay.

Jumps fans had been desperate to see the star of Seven Barrows. His comeback performance only reinforced why.

2.30 Kempton: full result and race replay

The dual Cheltenham Festival hero, so imperious in last season's Arkle, was expected to return earlier this month in the Tingle Creek Chase. He did not run because Henderson insisted he was not right to run.

A voice in the trainer's head told him he should wait a little longer for Ascot's Clarence House Chase on January 22, but he took the plunge. As a result, Shishkin is now odds-on with most layers for the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase and no bigger than 5-4 with Coral.

Shishkin jumps Kempton's second-last fence with a clear leadCredit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

There was a moment on the final bend when he seemed in trouble. Nico de Boinville briefly had to start shoving but then, all of a sudden, Shishkin was clear and he stayed clear, defeating Tingle Creek winner Greaneteen by an easy ten lengths.

"I am genuinely thrilled with him," said Henderson, accompanied at Kempton by owners Joe and Marie Donnelly.

"We were on the sidelines for four weeks, which is a long time. I know everybody was slamming us and hammering us but if I had run him in a Tingle Creek I would have wrecked him. I promise you, only a week ago I didn't think we had any chance of getting him here, but then he did one bit of work and Nico said we would have to enter him.

"He is difficult to judge at home, although he wasn't difficult to judge when he was wrong. He was blatantly wrong."

On this day he was wonderfully right. There is set to be another outing before Cheltenham, although Henderson believes Ascot may arrive too early and equally feels Newbury's Game Spirit Chase could come too close to Cheltenham.

Shishkin approaches Kempton's winner's enclosure as Nico de Boinville shows his delightCredit: Edward Whitaker

"If I said that Wednesday at Cheltenham is the only day that matters I'll get flogged again," he added. "People say I only train them for Cheltenham, but I don't. I wanted to be at the Tingle Creek but I couldn't. I didn't have a horse. Now I do, and there's massive improvement in him. There's tons to come. We're only halfway there."

De Boinville is looking forward to the rest of the journey.

"That was pretty phenomenal," he said. "We've been having our struggles with him and even there he's taken a really good blow going to the last. We were taking a bit of a chance today but his class has shone through.

"The penny literally seems to have dropped in the last week. He was going so well at home that we felt we had to come."

Who impressed you most on a busy Monday? Big-race opinions from our team

What did the rider think during those few fleeting seconds when Shishkin appeared not to be going well here?

"At that point you're interested to see, is it going to happen, or is it not?" he explained. "There's not much you can do about it. He seems to have a tremendous amount of gears. You get to a mile and a half and he finds more."

For Greaneteen it was all too much, although Bryony Frost reported he "hated" the soft ground.

"He just didn't have that spring and was beaten by a very, very good horse," said Paul Nicholls. "That lad will win the Champion Chase. He'll be the one to beat, without a shadow of a doubt."

Shishkin, pictured after his Desert Orchid Chase successCredit: Edward Whitaker

Lest there be any doubt, Nicholls was talking about Shishkin, who bookmakers agree has only one serious Champion Chase threat, the Willie Mullins-trained Energumene, about which little has been heard since his reappearance success at Cork three weeks ago.

"Willie doesn't get any flak for not running his, does he?" joked Henderson, a man with a weight lifted from his shoulders.

"That, for me, was special today," he stressed. "I know they weren't the champions of champions but the second had just won the Tingle Creek and Celebration Chase. Shishkin absolutely ran away from him. It's great to see him back where he belongs."

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