Henderson opts for Mersey date with star juvenile Lulamba

Nicky Henderson felt the extra half a mile and the generous 10lb allowance that Lulamba will receive in Saturday’s Turners Mersey Novices’ Hurdle at Aintree made swerving Thursday’s juvenile race a fairly easy decision.

The Triumph Hurdle runner-up had been expected to line up against his own age group in the Boodles Anniversary 4-Y-O Juvenile Hurdle over two miles and a furlong.

However, he was entered in the two-and-a-half-mile race against his elders on Monday and the Seven Barrows handler now thinks that is the right way to go.

He said: “When we looked at it, the extra distance, the 10lb allowance, everything just swayed us towards the other race.

“It was something that only came to me in the middle of the morning on the day of entries really – the extra half-mile is what I’m really after.

“He really finished off his race strongly in the Triumph and as Nico (de Boinville) said, he needed all of the Cheltenham hill to get by East India Dock and then it wasn’t his fault that one (Poniros) came past him, he just never saw him.

“We just felt the nature of the race on Thursday, I don’t need to tell anybody that Aintree is a completely different track, it’s very much a speedier track than Cheltenham.”