NICKY HENDERSON PROFILE: BRIAN O'CONNORlooks at the career of the quintessential English trainer who is on the verge of a very special Cheltenham Festival record

WE IRISH pride ourselves on providing the essence of Cheltenham, but the reality is that National Hunt racing’s greatest week is a very English experience.

The visitors might inject a lot of flavour but the meat of it all is John Bull. And there are few more English than Nicky Henderson, the man on the verge of a very special festival record.

The old Etonian, who trains for Queen Elizabeth and whose father was Montgomery’s aide-de-camp during the Desert War, has trained 39 Cheltenham festival winners in the 34 years since first turning his back on a job in the City and taking out a trainers licence.

Just one more and he equals the record of the legendary Fulke Walwyn.

There are very long odds available though about Walwyn’s venerable milestone remaining unsurpassed before the week is out. In fact there are probably some very decent odds about it not surviving the first two races.

Darlan is fancied in the Supreme and Sprinter Sacre isn’t so much a red-hot Arkle favourite as almost an article-of-faith that he is the heir apparent to Kauto Star.

And then there’s Binocular coming back for another crack at the Champion Hurdle.

Such a first-day team only reflects the exalted status Henderson holds within racing and the power contained in his yard, a strength in depth that could yet see him eclipse Paul Nicholls and earn a first trainers championship in 25 years.

“These four days are all about races for which almost every horse is bought,” he says.

“Almost as soon as they are born, people want to know which races at Cheltenham they can go for.”

And yet even amidst the pressure and expectation this week, perhaps what Henderson would appreciate most is an absence of drama.

For a man who exemplifies much of the upright tweediness of English jump racing, the 61-year-old has found himself at the centre of controversy much too often for his liking in recent years.

The shadow of the 2009 British Horseracing Authority verdict that saw him banned from running horses for three months, and fined a record £40,000, is destined to always figure largely in Henderson’s CV.

Moonlit Path, a horse that just happened to be owned by the queen, was given a prohibited anti-bleeding drug, something inevitably jumped all over by headline writers.

A year later, Binocular gave the trainer a fifth Champion Hurdle success but there were questions afterwards about how the JP McManus-owned horse had been ruled out of the race weeks beforehand only to suddenly re-enter calculations just before the race.

Last year Binocular again created a storm when withdrawn just 48 hours before the Champion Hurdle as a test found a steroid given to him to treat a skin allergy hadn’t passed through his system in time.

For a man renowned for living on his nerves throughout the festival, and the build-up, such headlines were a serious embarrassment although the natural affability that makes Henderson a mostly popular figure within the game managed to remain in place.

But no one realises the importance of the next four days more than him.

“It is all about Cheltenham, no exceptions,” Henderson’s former jockey Mick Fitzgerald wrote. “When he is looking at a three-year-old store horse, he is thinking Gold Cup or Champion Chase. Most trainers will tell you there are 361 days in the year, and then there is the Cheltenham festival. Nicky will tell you there are four days in the year, and 361 others.”

Barry Geraghty is the Irishman in the Henderson hot-seat now and he and the English trainer have become a formidable combination.

One of Geraghty’s greatest gifts is an ability to keep it simple and un-dramatic when it comes to the big occasion.

That will be just what his boss will be looking for today.