How have Champion Hurdle winners fared when sent chasing?

Jumping’s current equine superstar Constitution Hill faces a crucial crossroads in his career over the coming weeks, when a much-anticipated schooling session at Seven Barrows will reportedly determine whether the six-year-old embarks on a chasing career in 2023/24 or remains over hurdles.

Nicky Henderson’s famous training establishment has witnessed future top-notch chasers Altior and Shishkin graduate to the bigger obstacles there at the same age in recent years, whilst Sprinter Sacre was only five when making the switch back in 2011. None of that trio was a reigning Champion Hurdle winner, though, which means the decision to go chasing isn’t anything like so straightforward, particularly when one considers how dominant Constitution Hill is over the remainder of the current two-mile hurdling division.

Henderson has already amassed a record nine wins in the Champion Hurdle (four clear of nearest challenger Peter Easterby) and would presumably like to add to that tally, whilst he may also be keen for Constitution Hill to become the first four-times winner of the race – Henderson was responsible for one of the five triple champions in See You Then. In addition, keeping Constitution Hill over hurdles would surely increase his chances of breaking the record for longest unbeaten run over jumps, which currently stands at 19 and is held by Altior – Constitution Hill has won all seven starts under Rules so far.

By contrast, owner Michael Buckley often likes to think outside of the box when it comes to his higher-profile horses – he was a part-owner of the globe-trotting Grand Canyon, who was one of top-earning jumpers of the 1970s thanks to two wins in the very valuable Colonial Cup, whilst Buckley returned to US soil more recently when landing the 2019 American Grand National with the Henderson-trained Brain Power. Transatlantic trips aren’t on the agenda for Constitution Hill, however, with Buckley reportedly keen for him to make his own piece of National Hunt history closer to home by emulating Dawn Run, who is the only horse to have completed the Champion Hurdle-Cheltenham Gold Cup double, those wins coming in 1984 and 1986 respectively.

Do top class hurdlers always make top class chasers?

The transition from top-class hurdler to top-class chaser is not always straightforward, the different types of obstacles calling for a different technique, while achieving what Dawn Run achieved also involves vastly different distances, two miles over hurdles and three-and-a-quarter miles over fences. Two of the finest champion hurdlers of the 'seventies, Bula and Night Nurse, came closest to the Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup double before Dawn Run did it.

Bula went on to finish third at Cheltenham in the 1975 Gold Cup after winning eight out of ten steeplechases up to that point (he8 won 13 races over fences in his career) and Night Nurse had had 18 races over fences (including a tilt at the Gold Cup as a novice) when he was beaten a length and a half by his stablemate Little Owl in the 1981 renewal. Bula (fifth) and Night Nurse (third) were sent off favourite when bidding for a third Champion Hurdle win, but that time might have been better spent learning their trade over fences.

Both were aged ten when they were placed in the Gold Cup and Night Nurse's trainer Peter Easterby remains convinced that things might have panned out differently if Night Nurse hadn't been persevered with over hurdles for so long - “We didn't make many mistakes with Night Nurse but we should have gone over fences with him sooner than we did!”.

Night Nurse was eventually sent chasing as a seven-year-old, a year earlier than Sir Ken, Bula and the ill-fated Lanzarote who had been the first three Champion Hurdle winners to also tackle the Gold Cup subsequently. Sir Ken had won the Cotswold Chase (now the Arkle) at the Festival as a nine-year-old before falling in the next year's Gold Cup.

Fast and accurate jumping is the key to success in the top hurdle races and adapting to jumping bigger obstacles, which involves what horsemen call "rounding their backs over a fence', is usually easier for a younger horse, one that has not become too set in its ways. Good hurdlers can sometimes get away with having a less-than-perfect technique over fences but the transition can be difficult and there are plenty of examples of those who have tried and failed – including from the top-class staying ranks as well as the two-milers.

Night Nurse was "a natural jumper over anything', in the words of his trainer, and duly won no less than seven times during his novice chasing campaign in 1978/79 (he was forced to sit out the 1980 Gold Cup due to a career-threatening tendon injury). By contrast, Bula and Lanzarote struggled to adapt in the same manner according to their Gold Cup partner John Francome, as quoted in Richard Austen’s excellent At The Festival book. “They were both pretty much set in their ways by the time they went chasing. Both suffered from the same problem – they were really good hurdlers but they couldn’t round their backs at all over a fence. I’ve got a photo of Bula going through a fence at Newbury and his front feet are literally an inch above the frame of the at the back of the fence. At least Lanzarote, because he was less robust, he had to make a bit more effort. Lanzarote was very quick over his fences but when he got in close, even he just parted the birch halfway up.”

Alas, the Fred Winter-trained pair met with tragedy at the 1977 Cheltenham Festival, when Henderson was still learning his trade as that yard’s assistant trainer. The novice Lanzarote (having just his fifth chase start) was fatally injured in an accident a few strides after ninth fence in the Gold Cup, whilst the twelve-year-old Bula (who’d been usurped by Lanzarote as a Gold Cup hopeful) fell heavily in the Champion Chase and had to be put down several weeks later.

Another dual winner of the Champion Hurdle, Comedy of Errors was tried once over fences in the 1977/8 season at the age of ten and jumped well on the whole when runner-up in a well-contested minor event at Worcester. Mercy Rimell, wife of Comedy of Errors' trainer Fred, revealed later that, although Comedy of Errors was “a great big horse and we thought he'd jump fences” both her and Fred had “a horror that something would happen to him like Bula and Lanzarote…..it may sound sentimental but he had been such a wonderful horse and he was owned by somebody who was as sentimental as we were, so Fred didn’t run him over fences again and he was retired that season.”

The remarkable Dawn Run

Alas, such a “horror” did befall the hugely popular Dawn Run some nine years later, when the connections involved certainly weren’t singing from the same hymn sheet. Ironically, her demise didn’t come over fences but instead in a fall over the unusual French hurdles in the Grade Course de Haies d’Auteuil (a race she was attempting to win for a second time) at the end of her Gold Cup-winning campaign – she’d won at Cheltenham on just her fifth run over fences, her novice chase campaign having been restricted to just one (successful) run due to a training setback.

Her Auteuil fall was the third time in her career that she parted company with her rider, all three coming in her final campaign, including a first-fence fall at Aintree just three weeks after her Cheltenham win. Dawn Run’s final career win came in a lucrative match race at Punchestown against that season’s Queen Mother Champion Chase hero Buck House, beating that long-standing rival by two-and-a-half lengths off level weights (without her mares’ allowance) when dropped back down to two miles.

“I don’t think we’d like to go back there (to Auteuil). Having been a hurdler and then taught how to jump fences, I imagine that it wouldn’t be fair to revert back to the smaller obstacles,” trainer Paddy Mullins said in the immediate aftermath of that Punchestown win. Not for the first time, however, Dawn Run’s strong-willed owner Charmian Hill had other ideas – she’d already jocked off Mullins’ stable jockey son, Tony, for all three of the mare’s visits to the Cheltenham Festival. Mullins Jr was back on board for that final win - her Champion Hurdle-Gold Cup partner Jonjo O’Neill was injured at the time and announced his retirement merely days later – but was to lose the ride again after finishing only third in the Prix La Barka on Dawn Run’s preparatory run before the Grade Course de Haies d’Auteuil.

As a result, leading French jockey Michel Chirol was on board for that fateful final run, a broken neck sustained in a fall at the fifth last bringing a premature end to career of the most popular Irish-trained jumper since Arkle.

Only nine Champion Hurdle winners have had a stab at chasing since then, with decidedly mixed results. That number is down to just four since the turn of the century, a quartet which includes the Henderson-trained Buveur d’Air, who made a highly satisfactory start when winning novices at Warwick and Haydock before being reverted to hurdles mid-winter for a tilt at the Champion Hurdle – a decision prompted by the Willie Mullins-trained pair Annie Power and Faugheen being sidelined through injury. Buveur d’Air never ran over fences again.

Recent Champion Hurdlers who went chasing

The other three did at least contest the Cheltenham Festival as a novice chaser. The first of them, the 2002 winner Hors La Loi III, was sent into training with Paul Nicholls after an absence of 32 months (he had reportedly been retired briefly) and ran over fences five times during the 2005/6 season, winning at Taunton on his debut and ending up a never-dangerous sixth (having been sent off 40/1) in the Jewson Novices’ Handicap Chase as an eleven-year-old, on what proved to be his final start.

The 2012 Champion Hurdle winner Rock On Ruby had a brief flirtation with chasing too, winning two small-field novices prior to a tilt at the 2014 Arkle Trophy, where the nine-year-old lined up as the oldest runner in the field. It proved to be a culture shock for him and his jumping technique was exposed in more competitive company, trailing home last of eight finishers after an error-strewn round – he was immediately reverted to hurdles and never ran over fences again.

Faugheen had also skirted with retirement several times before he made his belated chasing debut just six weeks before his twelfth birthday. The evergreen veteran took remarkably well to the new discipline, winning that Punchestown maiden prior to following up in Grade 1s at Limerick and Leopardstown. The hero’s reception Faugheen was afforded at both Limerick and Leopardstown reportedly caused some head-scratching among his connections about whether he should be risked at the Cheltenham Festival, with fears of some sort of backlash if anything went wrong.

“We’re in the shop window of racing and you consider all things like his age,” said owner Rich Ricci. In the event, Faugheen emerged with plenty of credit in finishing a close third, beaten just a nose and a length, to Limerick runner-up Samcro and lesser-fancied stable-companion Melon. Indeed, Faugheen was arguably unlucky after a mistake three out resulted in him being caught behind the first two at a vital stage. Nevertheless, Faugheen was the first Champion Hurdle winner to reach the frame in a Grade 1 novice chase at the Festival since the 1996 champion Collier Bay finished a remote fourth in the SunAlliance Chase as a nine-year-old, three years after his Champion Hurdle win.

“I’m not sure we’ll definitely come back for the Gold Cup at 13, but we’ll see what the horse tells us,” Ricci said at the time. As it was, Faugheen entered well-earned retirement the following spring having not run again. Inevitably, however, racing fans were bound to ponder “How far would he have gone over fences had he switched codes much earlier?” The answer, in all probability, is “Right to the top!”. All of which should provide plenty of food for thought for Messrs Buckley and Henderson.

As those historic examples show, there will always be plenty of soul-searching involved by connections when it comes to assessing the risks of going chasing. What isn’t in doubt, however, is that the sooner a horse is sent chasing, the greater the chance of he or she has of fulfilling their potential in that sphere – particularly in the jumping department.

Like Faugheen, Constitution Hill was actually bought as a prospective chaser having begun his career in an Irish maiden point (albeit beaten into second!), so a switch to fences would hardly be a rash move given that backdrop. One thing is certain, though – whichever decision Constitution Hill’s connections finally plump for, they are bound to receive plenty of “advice” from the racing public about its merits!

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