Nicky Henderson has told antepost punters to ignore Zaynar’s shock defeat at Kelso on Thursday.

The grey headed into the race as favourite for next month’s Champion Hurdle but left punters stunned when he fluffed his lines at odds of 1/14.  Bookmakers were left unimpressed by the performance and pushed the horse out to 8/1 to taste Cheltenham Festival success next month.

However, Henderson has told punters not to make too much of the defeat and explained: "If it was again under normal circumstances i wouldn't have run anything in that ground yesterday, but if he didn't run there it meant we had to go straight to Cheltenham and while we toyed with that idea we took the view that we needed the run.

"All I can say is that somebody said to me well you probably wish that you hadn't run him but the answer is I'm glad I did because he needed it badly and if he'd gone to Cheltenham without that race he definitely wouldn't have won the Champion Hurdle at least that was a race under his belt.

"You've got to ignore the result because it obviously doesn't bare true relation - Punjabi got hammered in the Kingwell three weeks before it last year and won the Champion Hurdle."

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Champion Hurdle - Ladbrokes
2m, Cheltenham, March 2010
7/2 Solwhit,  4 Go Native, 7 Khyber Kim, 8 Zaynar, 10 Punjabi,10 Medermit,14 Starluck, 16 Celestial Halo, 20 Sublimity, 40 Donnas Palm, 50 bar, others on request (1/4 odds 1,2,3)