Monday Musings: A Strong Constitution

February 23, 2026
Tony Stafford

Almost exactly a year ago, I was invited by my friend Malcolm Cain to attend a Cheltenham preview meeting on a Saturday evening in Central London, writes Tony Stafford. It was a great do, very close to the event itself, and much debate focused on whether Constitution Hill would be able to regain the Champion Hurdle he had ceded to State Man and injury the previous year.

Lydia Hislop was one of the panellists and she was wary about the present state of his jumping whereas I managed to get in a word suggesting he was the best hurdler I’d ever seen. As we all know, he fell in the Champion Hurdle a few days later when a 4/7 shot; tumbled over again at Aintree the following month, and stopped as if shot at Punchestown.

In the five-horse Fighting Fifth Hurdle on his comeback run last November he got only as far as the second hurdle when making it three falls and a submission in his four latest runs following an unblemished ten victories in a row and a total of 103 lengths to the good.

While the behind-the-scenes machinations that produced last Friday’s £40k 4yo and up novice race at Southwell over one and a half miles might well have had ulterior motives, the desired effect – a win for the nine-year-old – was achieved and spectacularly so.

What nobody expected – unless Oisin Murphy might have had an inkling, judged on his post-race comments about when he rode the horse a couple of weeks earlier – was the sort of performance that you rarely see in any flat race.

While there weren’t any superstars among the opposition, more than a few of them were anything but the proverbial trees. Nine and a half lengths was the verdict, so 11 career wins – 112 lengths in total, at ten lengths a time and no doubt we hope, much more to follow.

We’ll have to wait until midweek’s crucial schooling session for a decision. Nico de Boinville will be hoping that Nicky Henderson and owner Michael Buckley will agree with him to allow their extraordinary nine-year-old to return to his day job, before embarking on what could be a lucrative second career on the flat.

As a jumps trainer – not merely any jumps trainer but one who has won nine Champion Hurdle races and pretty much everything else – Henderson would no doubt love to make it a round ten. He’s 75 now, yet there’s no diminution in the ambition nor the uncanny knack of getting his horse right on the big day.

In some ways Southwell on Friday was a big day. The Arena publicity machine (and Simon Mapletoft on Sky Sports Racing – I didn’t watch ITV) was in full volume afterwards, talking up the “tremendous crowd”. I suppose 3,800 is a lot for a Friday night at Southwell. I’ve been there when you’d struggle to find 300 – including staff and jockeys!

There was no disguising the excitement though as Oisin and the wonderful gelding returned to weigh in. He had overcome so many new experiences. First time in starting stalls, a first time on a Tapeta surface, and, of course, the first time he didn’t need to jump an obstacle.

I know Oisin has experience over jumps. He was fulfilling an ambition when he rode the six-year-old Ike Sport for Neil Mulholland on Boxing Day 2024 at Wincanton. The pair never got involved and Oisin eventually pulled up his mount. No doubt he’ll be at Cheltenham as a guest of Michael Buckley and probably hoping Nico forgets to set his alarm and a substitute rider is needed.

Incidentally, my host at the Cheltenham preview last year was involved with Buckley in a Cheltenham Festival winner trained by Nicky Henderson. They were among the members of the Men In Our Position Syndicate that also included Victor Chandler.

We talk of the correlation between hurdles and flat race abilities in handicap terms as being between 45 and 50lb. Constitution Hill is a 170-rated jumper, so there’s no reason why that couldn’t translate as a 120ish flat horse. Initial estimates of the worth of the single romp at Southwell has him already well into the low 100s and if he’d have had another furlong, say, to travel, he’d have won by at least 15 lengths, so you can add a few pounds to that!

What would you do if you were Michael Buckley? He has already stated that he wouldn’t mind having a crack at the Melbourne Cup. Two miles on fast ground? Maybe.

If he did go to Melbourne and won, he would eclipse the record age of a winner. Joseph O’Brien sent the eight-year-old Twilight Payment to win the 2020 race and he thereby joined Toryboy in 1865 and the 1938 victor Catalogue as the joint-oldest winner.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong yesterday, local history was made as Ka Ying Rising made it 18 wins in a row in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup, taking the £693k Group 1 race by an easy three and a half lengths under Zac Purton, smashing the track record in the process.

The David Hayes-trained five-year-old beat the previous record of 17 in succession set by another great local hero, Silent Witness. He started at 1/20 and Hong Kong racegoers who like to back a favourite would never have had much doubt that he would triumph yet again. The question now is, how far can he stretch the elastic?

Reverting to what could await Constitution Hill when he does turn to a flat-race programme, there is no bar on older horses being successful on the level. Hughie Morrison’s Alcazar was at his best as a ten-year-old when his crowning glory was victory in the Prix Royal Oak (Group 1) at Longchamp under Micky Fenton.

My memory is not always accurate, but I do believe that a 12-year-old hurdler called Beau Caprice won a division of the Gloucestershire Hurdle, forerunner of the Supreme and run in the old days in two divisions, in 1966. I think he was trained by Fulke Walwyn. [He was – Ed.]

But I cannot remember any nine-year-old winning a flat race first time out, certainly not one of this quality and by such a wide margin. Even if de Boinville gets his way and Constitution Hill does run at Cheltenham in a couple of weeks’ time, that surely will be the finale to his stellar jumping career, but one which with luck might have already equalled the feat of such as Istabraq with his three in succession.

- TS