In the build-up to the Cheltenham Festival, Timeform assess the claims of a leading contender. This week we look at the Champion Hurdle favourite Constitution Hill.
Pros
It was at the 2022 Cheltenham Festival that Constitution Hill first put up a performance that marked him out as something out of the ordinary. His effort was all the more remarkable given that the Supreme Novices’ was just his third start over hurdles and, in theory, a similar effort would have won him the Champion Hurdle later on the same card. Should anyone need reminding, the runner-up in the Supreme, 22 lengths away, was stablemate Jonbon. Constitution Hill earned a rating of 177 from the Supreme, a rating that he still has, though only once or twice since has Constitution Hill run to a similar level – or needed to. One of those occasions was when he won the 2023 Champion Hurdle (replay below) by nine lengths from one of his few top-class rivals of recent seasons State Man.
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Until the latest season, that was State Man’s only defeat in 13 completed starts since being trained in Ireland – he himself landed very short odds in last year’s Champion Hurdle when Constitution Hill was absent. In the 2023 Champion Hurdle, though, State Man was very much second best as Constitution Hill showed all the qualities that have made him impossible to beat so far – impeccable jumping, a high cruising speed and a turn of foot. The only other occasion when Constitution Hill has come close to showing something like the full extent of his ability was when slamming another Champion Hurdle winner, stablemate Epatante, by 17 lengths in the first of his three Christmas Hurdles in 2022.
Constitution Hill’s latest Christmas Hurdle was more about proving his wellbeing after an absence of exactly twelve months, during which he’d missed defending his Champion Hurdle title due to illness as well as an intended reappearance in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle when lame. Sent off only a shade of odds-on against a race-fit rival in Lossiemouth who was perceived as a genuine threat, Constitution Hill swept away any notion that he’d be vulnerable with another win while Lossiemouth lacked the speed to prove a threat. Constitution Hill then took his unbeaten record to ten races with perhaps his simplest task to date in last month’s International Hurdle at Cheltenham which he won with any amount in hand, albeit after surviving a very rare jumping lapse at the final flight.
Cons
It’s not easy to pick holes in the record of one of the best hurdlers seen for a very long time and one who is yet to taste defeat. But if Constitution Hill’s two races this season have proved his wellbeing after those setbacks, neither contest has truly answered the question of whether or not he retains all the ability that won him the Supreme and the following year’s Champion Hurdle. As on occasions in the past, however, it’s possible that Constitution Hill again might not have to pull out another top-drawer performance to reclaim his Champion Hurdle crown.
That all depends on how strong the challenge, specifically from Ireland, proves to be. Despite winning his third Irish Champion Hurdle recently, State Man no longer looks his main danger from that quarter, while Lossiemouth’s fall in the same contest was another dent in her claims after her defeat to Constitution Hill at Kempton. But another mare, Brighterdaysahead, is potentially much more of a threat assuming she doesn’t go for the Mares’ Hurdle instead.
Brighterdaysahead took her record under Rules to nine wins from ten starts with a seemingly much-improved performance in the Neville Hotels Hurdle at Leopardstown where she ran out a 30-length winner in a good time. Taking Brighterdaysahead’s 7 lb mares’ allowance into account, a repeat of that form, or something like it, in the Champion Hurdle would mean that Constitution Hill would have to run to somewhere close to his best next month.
Analysis by John Ingles
Dan Barber's verdict
There was an argument to be made, after he'd demolished the 2022 Supreme field and then toyed with subsequent winner State Man in the following year's Champion, that Constitution Hill was on track to prove himself the best hurdler of all time; the visual impression he continued to leave suggested he might be but the lack of depth in the division promised to deny him the chance to be pushed into recording one of those stratospheric ratings accumulated by such as stablemate Sprinter Sacre or Kauto Star.
The current two-mile crop is still some way short of the age of those many battles involving the likes of Brave Inca, Hardy Eustace and Harchibald in the early part of the century, but the potential addition of Brighterdaysahead and Lossiemouth to go alongside mainstay State Man means that question now for Constitution Hill is how much room for error he has if it's assumed his various hold-ups have robbed the sport of a potential 180+ performance?
If Brighterdaysahead can repeat what she did over Christmas, then the answer might be 'not much', though whether seeing ought to be believing so far as that freakish display is concerned - she'd scrambled past State Man even with fitness on her side in the Morgiana - is open to doubt and the fact the 2023 winner has made the track again since his winning return in the Christmas Hurdle hopefully bodes well.
Constitution has been the issue for this outstanding hurdler but the hill he must climb to regain his crown is still decidedly surmountable. And running to a rating around 170 may well be enough to prove it assuming the Elliott-trained mare isn't so potent under these circumstances as she'd looked at Leopardstown.
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