A tilt at the Irish Champion Hurdle was never on the cards for Constitution Hill because connections didn’t want to travel him so close to Cheltenham.
The brilliant and unbeaten hurdler has been restricted to just one outing this term, a facile win in the Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle, and a dirty scope ruled him out of a potential run in the Unibet Hurdle at Cheltenham on Saturday.
That’s a Grade Two contest and Matt Chapman, on ITV Racing, asked Nicky Henderson why the Grade One in Ireland was never a consideration?
“The Dublin Racing Festival is a tremendous asset and well done Ireland, they have it there. I wish we had a little more of that, I really do. I’m not going to decry it but it’s Willie’s benefit show as we see it,” the trainer said.
“I personally wouldn’t want to be going there in a fortnight’s time for an away game. It's always in favour of the home team. El Fabiolo was going to come (to Ascot) this week but he doesn’t seem keen to come next weekend and he’s obviously not going to come the weekend after because he’s got a home game.
“Why would we want an away game when we don’t actually need one?”
And despite the seeming ease of his victories, Henderson stressed races do a take a toll on Constitution Hill.
“This horse, you have to beware of him a little bit. It might look as though he’s winning everything easily but no horse wins these races that easily. They put a huge amount of mental and physical work into being that good. It’s not as easy as it looks, they still have to go through the stress and the rigours. His mental physique is better than any horse I know but it still takes plenty of out of them,” he added.
“I don’t think he was half the horse at Aintree last year as he was at Cheltenham because I think Cheltenham knocked the edge off him and that’s the first time that we saw the edge maybe not at 100%”
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