'VERY sad' Nicky Henderson has confirmed huge Cheltenham Festival favourite Sir Gino is OUT.
The superstar hurdler was red-hot favourite for the Triumph Hurdle, the first race on Friday.
His scratching is the latest in a long line for the Seven Barrows boss, who is having a simply awful Festival.
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Henderson, 73, posted in a statement on X: "Very sadly we have had to make a very tough decision which is not to run Sir Gino in the Triumph Hurdle tomorrow and the same applies to Shanagh Bob in the Albert Bartlett.
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"Both horses appear to be in great shape but we cannot ignore the performance of all our horses throughout this week and indeed last week as well, and we feel it would be crazy to chance it with two very high class young horses with their lives in front of them.
"Joe Donnelly who owns both of these as well as Shishkin has been incredibly supportive as have all our owners as well as the media and indeed racing as a whole, and we appreciate that enormously.
"We are very much looking forward to hopefully Aintree and Punchestown as soon as we get the team back to normal."
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Sir Gino had been odds-on to claim the top 2m race, while Shanagh Bob was among the market leaders for the Albert Bartlett on the same day.
Henderson's build-up to Cheltenham was rocked when he had to withdraw former Champion Hurdle king Constitution Hill.
Since then his runners have fallen like dominoes, with Shishkin yesterday ruled out of the Gold Cup.
The desperately unlucky timing of the mystery bug affecting his runners appears to have affected the mood in the camp.
Henderson's No1 jockey Nico de Boinville snapped at a question from ITV Racing presenter and Sun Racing columnist Matt Chapman yesterday.
De Boinville has ridden six Henderson horses at the Festival and five of them have been pulled up.
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The only bright spark all week was Luccia finishing third in the Champion Hurdle with James Bowen in the saddle.
At the time of writing, Henderson did still have some horses running over the final two days of the Festival.
But they are all massive odds.
Mill Green is a 40-1 chance in the Pertemps, while Chantry House, Hyland and Bold Endeavour are 25, 40 and 80-1 respectively.
Champ is also out of the Stayers' Hurdle as well but City Chief is 25s for the Kim Muir.
No Ordinary Joe remains his best chance of a winner at 9-1 in tomorrow's final race, the Martin Pipe.
Russian Ruler also goes in that but is currently 100-1.
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