Constitution Hill
The Listed Weatherbys August Stakes at Windsor yesterday evening went ahead without Constitution Hill. Michael Buckley’s horse was included among the entries for the race when they were published on Monday, and the chatter started, but it stopped on Tuesday when his trainer Nicky Henderson said that he would wait another week.
The ground was probably going to be too fast for him at Windsor, went the rationale, and, anyway, Ryan Moore would be at The Curragh and Oisin Murphy would be at Sandown. Trainer Nicky Henderson said that ideally he wanted his horse to be ridden by one of the riders who had ridden him before on the flat. The Group 3 September Stakes at Kempton next Saturday is now the target for the former Champion Hurdler.
We are still getting used to the idea that Constitution Hill is a flat horse. He was a jumps horse, exclusively a jumps horse, until he ran on the flat at Southwell last February, and, even after that, he was a horse who could return to jumps until a schooling session shortly thereafter finally closed off that path for sure and for good.
At his best, Constitution Hill was a brilliant hurdler, up there with the best-ever hurdlers. Sure, he lived on the edge, but that’s what the best do. He jumped his hurdles with a cat-like precision that left little room for error. Often, there were millimetres between the top of the hurdle and the bottom of his hooves, but that was part of his brilliance. Moscow Flyer was the same. All or nothing. Binary. One of the best two-mile chasers ever, in every one of the first 24 chases of his career, Moscow Flyer won if he didn’t fall or unseat.
Constitution Hill used to just win. He went 10 for 10 over hurdles. He bagged a Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and a Fighting Fifth Hurdle and an Aintree Hurdle and three Christmas Hurdles and, of course, that Champion Hurdlein 2023. When he went back to Cheltenham in a bid to win another Champion Hurdle in March last year, they sent him off as the 1/2 favourite. Bar a fall, they said.
Alas.
At the time, that fall was just one of those things. He lost concentration at the fourth last flight, before the race had really begun to heat up. He hit the top of the hurdle and he couldn’t get his landing gear sorted. It’s racing. It’s jumps racing.
Then he went to Aintree and fell again, this time at the penultimate flight and among horses, just as they were starting to get racing. He was long at the obstacle and he let fly. But when can you say that it is just another one of those things and when can you say that it is the beginnings of a pattern? Once may be regarded as a misfortune, Mr Worthing. Twice looks like carelessness.
He fell again on his debut last season, in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle in November, and it was time for a re-think.
There had been talk before about Constitution Hill running on the flat. They had talked about the Ascot Gold Cup last year, but any half-cocked plans to go to the Royal meeting never really got off the ground. After his fall in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle, however, flat talk re-surfaced, and a race was arranged for him at Southwell in February, the conditions written to suit the horse. The SBK Road to Cheltenham Novice Stakes, they called it, in acknowledgement of the fact that Constitution Hill was still on that road.
It is rare that you can appreciate the atmosphere of a night at the races through a television screen, but you could that night. Electric. And it was all new to Constitution Hill: first time to race out of stalls, first time to race on an all-weather surface, first time under lights, first time that he didn’t have to jump an obstacle in a race. But he gobbled it all up, came almost 10 lengths clear of his rivals in the home straight in an imperious performance that was every bit as impressive as anybody could have hoped for.
A schooling session was arranged for him five days later, the objective of which was to determine whether or not he would target the 2026 the Champion Hurdle, and it didn’t go well. At least it was definitive. Nicky Henderson outlined the detail of that session to the Racing Post during the week. He jumped the first flight of five hurdles well, upsides a stable companion. But he got the second flight all wrong. He remained upright and Nico de Boinville remained on board, and got him balanced again for the third flight. But he got that wrong too. After that, his rider pulled him up. He didn’t jump the last two flights of hurdles. No need. It was unlikely from that moment that he would ever jump another flight of hurdles again.
Now that Constitution Hill is a flat horse re-invented, conclusively, he poses another question: how good a flat horse can he be? There are parameters. When he won that race at Southwell, he came home nine and a half lengths clear of Square Necker, who won his next two and is now rated 97. He wasn’t as impressive in winning at Kempton in March on his second and latest flat run, and the runner-up has been beaten three times since and is rated just 82. The handicapper has given Constitution Hill himself a flat mark of 101. That’s the rating of a high-class handicapper, Listed race level bordering on Group 3 class.
He is not an extraordinary flat racehorse though, like he was an extraordinary hurdler, and therein lies the lament. After just 10 runs over hurdles, he was already up there with Lanzarote and Comedy Of Errors and Persian War in Timeform’s ratings. He hadn’t quite reached the level that Monksfield or Istabraq or Night Nurse reached, but he still had the potential to get there, before his hurdling foibles set in.
He is still box office though, and you can argue that he has the potential to go higher still on the flat. He is nine years old now, he is old for a flat horse, but he has run in just two races on the flat, and he has won them both. He could continue to progress on the flat, despite his age. Talk of the Long Distance Cup at Ascot or the Prix du Cadran at Longchamp or even the Melbourne Cup at Flemington is not outlandish.
We will be much wiser after he runs in the September Stakes at Kempton on Saturday. The chatter will start again soon.
© The Sunday Times, 30th August 2026
Back