As Nicky Henderson said one thing about Constitution Hill after his exercise gallop at Newbury on Tuesday morning, the betting markets said another, adding another twist to the build-up to his much-anticipated return to action at Newcastle in 11 days’ time.
The unbeaten winner of the 2023 Champion Hurdle finished a half-length behind Sir Gino, his galloping companion, his first trip to a track since February, but while Henderson said afterwards that “he’s ready for action” and insisted that the seven-year-old’s huge talent “is still there”, he had drifted from odds-on to odds-against for the Fighting Fifth Hurdle on 30 November within an hour of crossing the line.
Perhaps there was just too much anticipation in the air as Constitution Hill prepares to set out on a potentially career-defining season, too much eagerness for a clear sign that he will pick up where he left off with an effortless success in Kempton’s Christmas Hurdle last December.
He did not accelerate five lengths clear of Sir Gino on a tight rein, but then, that was never likely to be the plan, and there were no obvious signs of disappointment or concern from either Henderson or Nico de Boinville, Constitution Hill’s regular jockey. Nonetheless, one bookmaker shifted him from 4-7 to 13-8 second-favourite for the Fighting Fifth, behind Willie Mullins’s Mystical Power at 6-4, while he is now as big as 3-1 (from around 7-4) to win a second Champion Hurdle in March.
Henderson was adamant that his stable star will have nothing to prove at Newcastle, despite an 11-month break since his last competitive start and a minor bout of colic and a wind operation in the interim. “[Former stable star] Sprinter Sacre had a bad heart,” Henderson said. “This horse has had nothing wrong except for bad luck. There is nothing wrong with him.
“If you don’t have surgery [for colic], it’s irrelevant. The Fighting Fifth was abandoned [last year], he went to Kempton at Christmas and if you think about it, he only missed one race, which is the Champion Hurdle. He hasn’t died, he hasn’t been anywhere. He hasn’t been injured. He just missed a race. You have got to get it out of your head that he has been missing, or “will he come back?” Sprinter had been ill for a year-and-a-half, that was a comeback. This horse isn’t coming back, he ran at Christmas.”
Henderson also suggested that Sir Gino, an unbeaten four-year-old who is already second-favourite for next year’s Arkle Trophy Novice Chase without having jumped a fence in public, is “a machine” and “the only horse that can do that to Constitution Hill”, which will heighten anticipation ahead of Sir Gino’s planned debut over fences at Kempton on Monday.
“He is serious,” Henderson said. “He was the tragedy of last season, that he could go to Cheltenham [for the Triumph Hurdle in March]. That is as good a four-year-old as I have seen. Shishkin, Altior, Sprinter Sacre, they all went over fences much later. He’s four, but he’s got the size and scope of a chaser and he has been brilliant schooling.”
Constitution Hill was something of a guest star among the horses exercising at Newbury on Tuesday, at an annual event to promote the track’s Coral Gold Cup meeting on 29 and 30 November.
Among the likely runners at the meeting on show was Paul Nicholls’s Caldwell Potter, a €740,000 (£620,000) purchase for a syndicate that includes Sir Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager, at a major dispersal sale earlier in the year. He could make his debut for Nicholls in a novice chase at Newbury on Friday.
“I’m glad we didn’t run him in the spring, he’s a different animal now,” Nicholls said. “He’s had a nice prep, looks good and we are itching to get him going.”
