The Olly Murphy-trained Thunder Rock was a surprise disappointment in Saturday’s December Gold Cup, pulling up before the fourth-last fence.

It was always going to be a tough ask for jockey Sean Bowen to get the gelding back in contention after making some obvious jumping errors in the first half of the race and connections reported Thunder Rock had lost a right-fore shoe during proceedings.

"He's absolutely fine, the writing was on the wall very early. He got into no rhythm and jumped very ordinary and after he jumped two or three [fences] he was in awful trouble," said trainer Olly Murphy.

"We'll put a line through that and give him another run over fences in three or four weeks' time, but I'm not sure where yet. I have toyed with the idea of going back over hurdles and if things don't got to plan the next day he'll be reverting back to smaller obstacles."

With some of his best performances coming in small fields, Murphy suspects the busy handicaps may not suit the seven-year-old: "He's not very big and while I didn't think he'd do what he did on Saturday, it's not the biggest surprise to me.

"We'll dust ourselves down, get him back in full work and see what's what, but his performance wasn't a reflection of his ability or his health or anything like that. He just didn't jump with any fluency and when you do that in those big handicaps you're on the back foot straight away.

"When you have a long-term plan like that and you can see it's not working out from an early stage it's extremely frustrating, but that's horses and we know he hasn't lost his ability overnight."