Nicky Henderson has provided an upbeat update on Constitution Hill following his Fighting Fifth Hurdle fall and has also revealed that stablemate Sir Gino could revert to hurdles this season.
The Seven Barrows handler cut an emotional figure post-race up at Newcastle, but, speaking on Monday's Nick Luck Daily Podcast, he told the host that no solid plans had been made and that retirement was not at the forefront of connections' minds: “It’s difficult because straight after it you haven't got time to think.
“We haven’t come to any firm conclusions yet. We need to see how he is over the next 10 days.
“He was stiff on Sunday – as were a lot of ours who ran on Saturday, they were post-race stiff – but I don’t think it was anything more than that. We will examine him very shortly.
“We will take it one step at a time.”
Retirement had been mooted in some quarters for the Michael Buckley-owned eight-year-old, but Henderson revealed that the horse is more likely to have a run on the Flat than be retired, having shown his trainer plenty of zest in the build-up to Saturday’s content.
He explained: “I was gutted. We were utterly convinced [that he would jump round], he hadn’t put a foot wrong in his schooling and his work had been fantastic.
“We hadn’t seen him work better than he has been, which makes it all the more disappointing.
“You have to accept that at some point someone might get hurt – he has had three falls and both horse and jockey have come home unscathed – but it’s gruelling.
“He’s very important to our lives and we won’t keep asking him to do something if we don’t think it’s right.
“We have to be very careful and well aware of the public perception. If anything catastrophic did happen then people would have the opinion that we shouldn’t have done it.
“We’re not giving up for sure and retirement is out of the question as far as I’m concerned – he's an eight-year-old who is in his prime – and there are other things we can do.
“The one thing I wouldn’t rule out is giving him a run on the Flat and seeing where he stands. He’s such a high-class horse and there might be crazy things he could do under that code, though he has never seen a starting stall in his life.
“It’s amongst the many different options.
“He won’t run over fences. We’ve schooled him – he hasn’t had a fall – but we have tried him over mini-fences and that is not the route; that would not solve the problem. That is categorical.
“But I’m not going to promise that he will never jump a hurdle again because he will.”
Hurdling could also be on the cards for fellow Seven Barrows inmate Sir Gino who shortened in the betting for the Champion Hurdle on the back of Saturday’s incident.
Henderson revealed: “It has crossed our mind over the weekend, but it’s just a possibility – no more than that.
“I need a race for him around Christmas, and I was thinking of the Desert Orchid [handicap chase], but we aren't going to make any firm targets for him because I don’t want to have a deadline where we are aiming at a race.
“We are going to let him take us and tell us when he is ready.
“But the obvious race if you were going to start him then would be the Christmas Hurdle, and if that was the case then it’s possible [that he could run in the Champion Hurdle].
“He isn’t a novice now over fences, so if we went down the two-mile route then we would be looking at the Clarence House and then the Champion Chase.”
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