Sara Bradstock is hoping for the best after Coneygree suffered a minor setback on Monday.

The Cheltenham Gold Cup winner is due to contest the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury on Saturday week, but his participation was thrown into doubt when he spread a plate at their Letcombe Bassett stables.

Bradstock, who is assistant to her trainer-husband, Mark, is keeping her fingers crossed for a swift recovery with a weekend gallop judged crucial to Coneygree’s plans.

She said: “He pulled a shoe, it didn’t cause him any problems but we can’t see if it’s a bruised foot or if he’s brewing an abscess.

“We’re hoping for an abscess as the pus will seep out and he should be OK.

"If it’s a deep-seated bruise, he might not make the Hennessy.

“If he misses his gallop at the weekend he won’t run and for him to take part in that he would need to have a shoe on by Thursday.”

Meanwhile, Cheltenham winners are always warmly received, and West Ilsley trainer Mick Channon’s first for many a year with Knock House certainly fitted into that category.

The six-year-old put up a terrific performance under Nina Carberry to defy top weight by a neck from Foxbridge in the Cheltenham Club Amateur Riders’ Handicap Chase over three miles and a furlong.

Channon said of the 9-2 joint favourite: “He is a smashing little horse.

"He ran very well at the Festival when he was fifth and has done everything right.

“I haven’t had a winner at Cheltenham since I first started training, when I think Lorna Vincent won on a horse called Golden Scissors here for me.

“We’ve been placed several times, but we won’t have had that many runners.”

Channon’s hopes of making a swift return to the Cheltenham winner’s enclosure with Somersby were dashed when his stable star finished a 14-lengths second to a rejuvenated Sprinter Sacre in the Shloer Chase on Sunday’s card.

The West Ilsley handler reflected: “You knew if he turned up it was going to be difficult, and unfortunately for us he did.”

Somersby could now go for either the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown on December 5 or the following day’s Peterborough Chase at Huntingdon.