Get there early, get a good view. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the thousands flooding into the Cheltenham Festival on Tuesday, don’t miss it. This could be an ‘I was there’ moment.
If you’re home, tune in, sit back and enjoy it all, because the remarkable Constitution Hill will claim to be one of the greatest show jumping horses of all time when he runs for the Champion Hurdle on opening day.
At incredibly low odds of 1-3 favorite to beat his six rivals, Constitution Hill has only run five times, but each time he has destroyed the course.
It has captured the imagination of the racing public, but on Tuesday it may move to the front and center of the general public’s consciousness. The six-year-old has been hailed as the perfect racehorse: an equine athlete with an F1 engine and the laid-back temperament and reliability of a Volvo.
Trainer Nicky Henderson has already won the Champion Hurdle a record eight times, but at Constitution Hill, a gelding he describes as ‘extraordinary’, his ninth success could be his most spectacular yet.
Constitution Hill (pictured) is the heavy favorite for this year’s Champion Hurdle.
Constitution Hill could easily make as far-reaching an impact on the sport as the great Frankel, the colt rated best to run on the Flat, who won all of his 14 races for his late trainer, Sir Henry Cecil.
On Tuesday afternoon, in front of a crowd of nearly 65,000 on the first day of the Festival and with hundreds of thousands of viewers watching on television, the stage is set to send the message of his brilliance to the world.
“Constitution Hill obviously has great capacity,” an emotional Henderson said Monday, “but its most powerful weapon is that it channels it in the right direction.”
It is his mind that sets him apart. He is so easy. He eats. He sleeps, he works. In a race, I don’t think it makes any difference if you go two or three miles. You can mount it as you like.
‘One should not get too carried away at this stage of life. He is just a young horse. He has a long way to go, but visually he has been very impressive every time he has raced. You can’t criticize what he has done. We have been lucky enough to train many good horses and when things like this happen, you find yourself the caretaker of public property.
Constitution Hill was beaten in his only point-to-point race in Ireland, but has cleaned up in every race he has run under the rules by a double-digit length margin. That includes winning last season’s supreme rookie hurdle on this day by 22 lengths.
In doing so he broke the course record and completed the contest in 5.78 seconds, around 23 lengths, faster than Honeysuckle won the 2022 Champion Hurdle over the same course and distance.
His career may be in its infancy, but the renowned Timeform organization, which rates racehorse performances, already lists Constitution Hill as the seventh-greatest hurdler of all time.
Above him on the list are only Istabraq and Persian War, both three-time Champion Hurdle winners, both Champion Hurdle winners Night Nurse, Comedy Of Errors and Monksfield, plus French hurdle ace Le Sauvignon.
The most surprising part of Constitution Hill’s story is his temper. A monster on the track, he’s a teddy bear off it. He was purchased as a colt by former Henderson stable jockey Barry Geraghty before being sold to owner Michael Buckley. In those formative years, Geraghty’s three young daughters, Siofra, Orla and Rian, rode it.
Trainer Nicky Henderson (pictured) has called Constitution Hill an “extraordinary” horse.
“It’s kind of unheard of and he’s the only one they’ve ridden,” Geraghty said. “He was the most relaxed horse of all time. We have had other good horses, but never anything as horizontal as him!
So laid-back is Constitution Hill that in his early days at Henderson’s Lambourn stables he was considered so slow and lazy that he was blamed for slowing the whole rope down. Henderson even called his former jockey to make sure she hadn’t been sold anything.
“One morning we put a rider on it,” Henderson said, “and yelled, ‘For God’s sake, would you give this thing a little attention to see if it’s any good?'” He suddenly galloped up on his account. He was literally a furlong ahead of the other two he had left behind and the cyclist wasn’t exactly pushing him. He had found the button.
A victory for Constitution Hill would be a huge morale boost for the British owners who once again face a daunting challenge at Cheltenham from the Irish who won 18 of the 28 races last year and 23 races in 2021, which was humiliating for the local team.
If the Irish limit themselves to 18 wins this time over the four days, there will be British relief and something better will mean it’s time to pop the champagne.
In ante-post markets, where punters place their bets before the start of the race, the Irish runners lead the bets on 21 of the 28 races. Most disturbing of all, Irish manager Willie Mullins, whose 88 Festival wins make him the most successful in meeting history, seems to have the ammunition that could help him break his record 10 wins in 2022. Unbelievably , is set to have more than 80 riders in the next four days.
But he doesn’t have Constitution Hill.