John Ingles discusses the unbeaten record of Honeysuckle and how she compares to other National Hunt stars to have amassed long winning sequences.
It’s three years ago this month that Honeysuckle, then a four-year-old and the winner of her only start in an Irish point, made an impressive debut under Rules in a mares’ maiden hurdle at Fairyhouse. ‘Sure to progress and win more races’ was how Timeform summed up her prospects after the race, though even the most optimistic interpretation of that comment probably wouldn’t have come close to imagining what she has achieved since. Not only has Honeysuckle won 11 more races since, she’s also yet to taste defeat as she embarks on what will be her fourth campaign over hurdles.
The Champion Hurdle last March, her second success at the Cheltenham Festival after the Mares’ Hurdle the previous season, counts as her career highlight to date, though she can also boast two editions of the Irish Champion Hurdle and a Punchestown Champion Hurdle in April which took her record to 12 out of 12. She makes her return seeking a hat-trick of wins in Fairyhouse’s Hatton’s Grace Hurdle, appropriately enough a race named in honour of the first horse to win three Champion Hurdles – he completed his hat-trick for Vincent O’Brien between 1949 and 1951.
While Honeysuckle takes an impressive record into the Hatton’s Grace, it has been won by some even more prolific Irish horses in the past. Istabraq, a triple Champion Hurdle winner himself, won the Hatton’s Grace twice among his 23 wins from 29 starts over hurdles. He was beaten on his hurdling debut but then ran up a sequence of 10 straight wins. Had he not suffered a shock defeat when bidding for a hat-trick in the Hatton’s Grace in 1999, he would also have racked up another sequence of 12 wins later in his career.
The horse who turned him over at odds of 1/7 was Limestone Lad who was to win the Hatton’s Grace three times in all among a career total of 35 wins, 29 of them over hurdles, though he never won more than five on the bounce. Limestone Lad’s trainer James Bowe won the Hatton’s Grace three more times with the mare Solerina who completed her hat-trick between 2003 and 2005 as part of a career total of 19 wins. Hurricane Fly won the Hatton’s Grace once among 24 wins over hurdles which included nine in a row.
Willie Mullins’ two other Champion Hurdle winners, Faugheen and Annie Power, both began their careers with 10 straight wins before suffering their first defeats. Faugheen won a bumper on his debut under Rules (he’d won his only point like Honeysuckle) and was still undefeated when winning the 2015 Champion Hurdle but had his unbeaten record ended by stable-companion Nichols Canyon when making his reappearance in the following season’s Morgiana Hurdle. Annie Power’s first defeat came in the 2014 World Hurdle at Cheltenham on her only try at three miles; she’d begun her career with three wins in bumpers, the first two of them for Jim Bolger.
Mullins enjoyed an even longer winning sequence with Douvan, though he’d been beaten on his debut over hurdles in France. Successful there on his next outing, Douvan then won his first 13 starts for Mullins, including the Supreme Novices’ and Arkle, before coming unstuck at odds of 2/9 when attempting a third Festival win in the 2017 Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Another lengthy winning sequence bit the dust at the latest Cheltenham Festival when Envoi Allen, now Honeysuckle’s stable-companion, fell in the Marsh Novices’ Chase. That brought his unbeaten record to a halt after 11 wins which included the Champion Bumper and Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle. That leaves Honeysuckle clear as the owner of jumping’s current longest unbeaten record. A fall on his hurdling debut, after a winning debut in a bumper, is the only blemish to date on the record of Shishkin who has now won his last eight races.
While neither were unbeaten at the time, Big Buck’s and Altior are the pair of jumpers who established record winning sequences over jumps this century. When he unseated at the last in the 2008 Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury, it prompted Paul Nicholls to return Big Buck’s to hurdling with spectacular results as he maintained a vice-like grip on the staying hurdling scene which saw him win his next 18 races between New Year’s Day 2009 and Newbury’s Long Distance Hurdle in December 2012. It was only after more than a year off with a leg injury that Big Buck’s finally met with defeat as an 11-year-old in the 2014 Cleeve Hurdle.
Altior made a winning debut for Nicky Henderson in a bumper at Market Rasen later that year before suffering defeats in two similar events but he then racked up 19 straight wins over jumps between October 2015 and April 2019, including four Festival wins in the Supreme Novices’, Arkle and two Queen Mother Champion Chases. His second Champion Chase matched Big Buck’s record before he broke it in the following month’s Celebration Chase at Sandown. Altior’s unbeaten run over jumps was ended by Cyrname in the 1965 Chase at Ascot the following November.
Incidentally, stable-companion Buveur d’Air finished third to Altior in the Supreme but that turned out to be the dual Champion Hurdler’s only defeat in his first 14 starts over jumps as he went on to win his next 11 races.
More from Sporting Life
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.
