GC on a remarkable weekend for the sport

Graham Cunningham on the debate over Constitution Hill's future

By Graham Cunningham

Horse Racing

Mon January 12, 2026 · 8h ago

Our columnist starts his Cheltenham series with a look at the debate over what's next for Constitution Hill.

Festival Files to Peel away the Cheltenham layers

Racegoers enjoy the action at Cheltenham

Remember John Peel’s Festive Fifty?

Those of you who aren’t too fossilised to recall the late Radio 1 legend won’t need reminding of the annual poll he ran to identify the record of the year and some belters topped the list when I were a lad, with northern powerhouses New Order, The Smiths and The Fall all prominent.

The bearded broadcaster gradually wearied of the format, grousing that “too many white boys with guitars” were dominating, but there will be no lack of diversity in this year’s Festival Files.

Bearded podcaster David Ord has spoken and it’s my job to respond with a series of pieces designed to get people talking ahead of the jumping jamboree.

No idea is off limits – though we might park the ‘too many white boys’ angle for this year – but let’s start the 2026 Festival countdown with The Fall.

Creative thinking the key to Constitutional crisis

Constitution Hill flies the last in the 2023 Champion

Correction – The Falls.

A gasp-inducing purler four out in the Champion Hurdle; a nosedive two out when short of room as the sprint kicked in at Aintree; and an ears pricked Fighting Fifth capsize that had some seasoned observers calling for surrender and others taking a less reactive view.

“That surely has to be it,” said Sky Sports Racing’s Mike Cattermole on his X account.

“Time to stop now with this wonderful horse,” added Observer sage Paul Hayward, while Guardian guru Greg Wood boomed that “this a horse that should not be allowed to jump a hurdle in public again.”

Meanwhile, Racing TV’s Lydia Hislop has “slowly moved away” from an initial reaction that retirement was the best option for Constitution Hill.

ATR’s Kevin Blake moved swiftly in the old school direction, dishing out a spray to “the lily-livered brigade” before arguing that “with all the emotion stripped out of the equation, the thing to do is go novice chasing with him.”

And you could almost hear the quiver in the voice of the nameless Timeform scribe who signed off a Newcastle summary by saying “talk of chasing feels fraught with danger and a belated Flat career may well be the more sensible – and less stressful – next move.”

Conscious of the fervent hold this brilliant-yet-brittle gelding has exerted on a sizeable chunk of the racing public for the last four years, Nicky Henderson fronted up in the aftermath of the Fighting Fifth fail to insist that “retirement is out of the question.”

But Nicky knows the sport he cherishes would suffer a grievous blow if worse came to worst on day one of the Festival and revealed as much on the Nick Luck Daily by saying “if anything did happen, we would quite rightly probably be...”

The way the latter sentence trailed off into the ether back in early December lies at the heart of the dilemma for a 75-year-old captain who has sailed See You Then, Sprinter Sacre, Binocular and various other stars through choppy waters down the years.

His laudable tendency to overshare about the most talked about horse in training has been reined back of late and there has been an understandably guarded tone to recent bulletins, the first reporting a “fat knee” to Matt Chapman in The Sun last week and then today’s “it’s still very possible that he’ll have a run on the Flat” in the Racing Post.

Time will tell whether a spin on the level would be the means to a Cheltenham end or a doorway to a new career and, under normal circumstances, quibbling with a bloke who has nine Champion Hurdles jugs on his sideboard would seem strange in the extreme.

But there is nothing normal about these circumstances…

Nicky Henderson thanks the Cheltenham crowd in January last year

Equine heavyweights who have suffered a series of KO’s can’t do an Anthony Joshua and rehab on pay-per-view against some overmatched influencer from YouTube and the notion that an eight-year-old by a stallion whose best Flat runner hit a Racing Post rating of 84 would make a seamless transition to Flat racing seems highly suspect.

So we wait for the publication of the Champion Hurdle entries on Tuesday and wonder whether nuance – and perhaps another plot twist – has a place in this compelling yet complex saga.

You can’t help what heart and head tell you when a hero hits hard times and the disparate views of the Cat, Hayward, Hislop, Wood and the Timeform team are all justifiable, though you shudder to think how Blakey’s lily-livered brigade would react if Constitution Hill’s next move involved going arse over tit in a novice chase.

Henderson will set sentiment aside as he feels his unenviable way to the final call, and his restless mind will be racked with delicate questions ahead of one of the most difficult decisions of his career.

Is there an eyesight problem or a genuine issue with padded hurdles that have turned a quicksilver athlete into a cement-footed liability?

What would a February Flat spin truly reveal about whether Constitution Hill is ready to return to the heat of the Festival jumping furnace?

Will Constitution Hill ever be able find his feline agility over timber now the seeds of jumping doubt have been sown repeatedly?

And with the memory of a hard Saturday at Kempton in mind, are the stakes simply too high to go all in when your record over jumps since last spring reads three falls and a Punchestown submission?

For what it’s worth, my personal and predictably guarded answers to the above four questions would be dunno, precious little, pass and possibly.

Could have been a Contender

Nicky Henderson and Constitution Hill on Monday

Nicky Henderson with Constitution Hill

And yet maybe there’s another way to address this Constitutional crisis.

Picture the scene:

Frost kyboshes Wincanton’s Kingwell Hurdle on February 14 and the good people at Unibet – valued sponsors of the Champion Hurdle and a certain veteran Lambourn handler - come up with the one-off idea of reviving the old Contenders Hurdle on Royal Artillery Gold Cup day at Sandown the following Thursday.

Said Lambourn handler, who described the Contenders as his favourite race when farming it with Binocular and Buveur d’Air, shelves his Flat plans and Constitution Hill gets back in the old routine in a relatively low-pressure affair, jumping sensibly in a small field and coming clear back at the track where it all began for him.

Then picture another scene:

Spring is in the Cotswold air and the most thrilling hurdler of the modern era – perhaps with a bold new rider on his back – is back in the Champion Hurdle line-up as a spellbinding second string to the first horse ever to bruise his aura of invincibility.

Constitution Hill has been on a traumatic journey since that lacklustre November gallop morning at Newbury in 2024.

There can’t be a soul who thinks he is still capable of the jaw-dropping performance he delivered to savage Jonbon in the 2022 Supreme and it would take rose-coloured glasses to view him as the same horse who sauntered clear of State Man before launching like a missile over the last flight of the 2023 Champion.

But for all his tribulations, there remains a fair chance that this mesmerising and now maligned old champ retains most if not all the ability he showed to beat Lossiemouth fair and square to land a historic third Christmas Hurdle at Kempton just over a year ago.

That won’t be enough if Sir Gino is as good as the market suggests but State Man being sidelined leaves the Champion ratings bar set in the low-160s.

A healthy Constitution Hill could still be at or close to that level. And that redemptive Sandown/Wincanton scenario, outlandish as it might seem, wouldn’t be the strangest switcheroo in jumping history.