David Ord reflects on a good day at the office for Nicky Henderson, and a good season so far for jump racing fans.
As Nicky Henderson walked towards the presentation podium following Saturday’s BetMGM Clarence House Chase he was for once, on a pulsating afternoon, in his own company.
He could reflect on another good day at the office, one which saw him leave Ascot with both the 11/10 favourite for the Champion Chase and the 11/8 favourite for the JCB Triumph Hurdle.
He won the feature race for a seventh time with Jonbon, whose nine-year-old legs proved too much for the two-time champion chaser and now 11-year-old Energumene after they straightened up and took aim at the finishing post down the famous home straight.
Yet again, for the 17th time in 20 career starts, JP McManus's charge turned up and delivered. His perfect domestic season now reads three from three.
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The one big race to elude him so far is the day-two highlight at Cheltenham. On all known evidence he’s going to turn up at Prestbury Park, run to a Timeform rating somewhere in the low 170s and, in all probability, that will be enough.
A peak Energumene could better it, but the 2025 model, for all that the old vim and vigour remained for much of the contest, doesn’t operate at quite the same level.
Maybe Gaelic Warrior can soar higher than he has so far? El Fabiolo is on the comeback trail and has had the measure of Jonbon in the past, but neither have had a clear shot at things this season.
Jonbon has, and nobody would begrudge Henderson and his team that, not after the dark cloud that swept over Seven Barrows so publicly last February and ultimately decimated their Cheltenham week.
Every trainer’s greatest nightmare had arrived for a handler who must have thought he’d seen it all in a glittering career up to that point.
This season he has momentum. Not only did Jonbon do exactly what the market suggested he would on Saturday, but Constitution Hill clambered off the canvas to floor Lossiemouth in the Christmas Hurdle, and Sir Gino had at least one gear too many for Ballyburn in the Wayward Lad a day later at Kempton Park.
They are odds-on for the Champion Hurdle and the Arkle respectively, the master of Seven Barrows being responsible for four of the six shortest-priced favourites at the Cheltenham Festival at the time of writing.
That quartet includes Lulamba in the JCB Triumph. Henderson had expressed surprise to see him heading that particular Cheltenham market without even jumping a hurdle in anger in Britain, but he did at Ascot on Saturday and was very, very good.
“I was prepared to get beaten today with all the hype and this, that and other, but you have to eat humble pie here as the hype appears to be correct,” the trainer smiled.
But despite such apparent strength for what is the biggest week in the jump racing calendar, what this season has shown, and what the lessons from the spring of 2024 underline, is that four days aren’t the be all and end all.
We’re less than two weeks away from round three between Brighterdaysahead and State Man plus Galopin Des Champs versus Fact To File. Big guns taking on big guns.
Domestically, we owe a huge debt of thanks to the Willie Mullins team for sending over A-Listers to our biggest prizes. They’ve added so much to them with the cupboard at the highest level still relatively bare on these shores.
And to underline the fact next Saturday, Constitution Hill, unexpectedly but excitingly, is to take in the Unibet International Hurdle at Cheltenham. But this, through no fault of his nor the Henderson team, has all the hallmarks of a racecourse gallop with prize-money up for grabs.
When he was bound for the Fighting Fifth in November, Mullins was sending one of last season’s leading novice hurdlers, Mystical Power his way.
At Christmas, Lossiemouth, let’s not forget Champion Hurdle favourite at the time, made the journey.
But Rich Ricci’s racing manager Joe Chambers made it clear on the Nick Luck Daily Podcast this week that the Grade Two contest at Prestbury Park isn’t likely to be on her agenda.
With the Irish Champion Hurdle looming large, no other big guns from across the Irish Sea are expected to be on ferries bound for these shores and a Grade Two contest.
It will be great to see Constitution Hill in action but it will also act a timely reminder of just how important it is that the best horses take each other on. That’s what sets the pulse racing, gets racegoers excited and people talking about our sport again.
It's why people still reference Shishkin versus Energumene in the 2022 renewal of Saturday’s feature race, why so many social media and YouTube accounts are dedicated to the great clashes of the past.
Maybe the 2025 Clarence House Chase wasn’t quite as titanic a tussle as the one the runner-up fought out three years before.
But it was a bloody good horse race. And you can never have enough of those.
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