NICKY Henderson believes Great Britain’s top trainers should still be fearing Willie Mullins at the Cheltenham Festival, despite the Irish handler being robbed of many of his stars for next month’s spectacle.

Mullins has finished as the top trainer at the four-day event at Prestbury Park in five of the last six years, including each of the last four.

Faugheen, Annie Power and Min have all been ruled out of this year’s Festival which gets under way on March 14, due to injury, while another of Mullins’ charges, Vautour, suffered a fatal injury back in November.

The Irishman saddled three winners of the opening day of the Festival 12 months ago, although he was upset by the Henderson-trained Altior in the very first race of the meeting.

This week, British champion trainer Paul Nicholls spoke in glowing terms of the team that Lambourn handler Henderson will take to Cheltenham, although at his own pre-Festival media day at his Seven Barrows yard yesterday, the 66-year-old conceded that Mullins remains the man to beat.

“We all like this sort of psych that Paul likes to make it a little bit more entertaining. I am not falling for it. We are just going to get on with what we have got to do,” said Henderson, a three-time British champion trainer.

“It’s all good fun like that and don’t forget, Willie is going to come over here with lorry loads of ammunition. They will still take plenty of beating, and Gordon Elliott.

“You are going to start the first race as normal, Willie will be favourite and we will have to box him out of it.

“This time last year with Altior, that was about as about as confident I could be about anything. If couldn’t win that, we weren’t going to win anything.

“Willie is going to have a mighty team and so is Paul, and so is everybody. There are good horses littered all over the place.

“You don’t want to start forgetting that Willie is going to be there in droves and they’ll be very hard to beat – they always are.

“Paul says that the best way to take the pressure off is put it on somebody else. Well, thanks.”

The Henderson yard has not escaped injury itself this season and the trainer will travel to Cheltenham without one of his biggest names following the retirement of Sprinter Sacre back in November.

Sprinter won a second Queen Mother Champion Chase at last year’s Festival, that coming after almost two years out due to a heart problem.

Henderson said: “He went to Newbury the other day and he’s going to Cheltenham on the Tuesday to say hello. He loves it until we have to turn his head back to the stables and say you can’t go down to the start.

“We miss him, and we miss him not stood right here right now waiting for the battle with Douvan, and wouldn’t that be something?”

Even the big race of the Festival has also been robbed of some of its prestige with the news earlier this week that bookies favourite Thistlecrack, trained by Colin Tizzard, will not run in the Gold Cup after being ruled out.

That comes less than a month after further anguish at Cheltenham following the death of Many Clouds on Festival Trials Day, as the former Grand National winner collapsed in the wake of inflicting a first defeat in Thistlecrack’s chasing career.

Dorset handler Tizzard still saddles the top two in the betting for the Gold Cup in the shape of Native River and Cue Card, and Henderson, who does not have an entry for the showpiece contest, hopes it is the latter who prospers.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? You’d have thought that of the three of Colin’s that would have been the least likely, it would have been Native River. He grows on you and he’s the one that has really progressed,” said Henderson.

“Cue Card deserves one, he’s been a great horse. We all love those old favourites and he’d be the favourite horse to go and win, so why not?”