Is it the pride of an old man which will bring about the end of a great champion? For a year, Constitution Hill has been telling Nicky Henderson the same thing, but he will not listen. He seems incapable of accepting that a great champion serial winner at the highest level can unexpectedly develop a catastrophic fault. His response to something which is beyond his experience is denial. Any objective viewing of Constitution Hill’s three falls reveals a horse which has lost its confidence altogether. In the last race at Newcastle, he only managed one hurdle and fell at the second.
After the first fall at Cheltenham last year it was not unreasonable to believe that that was a one-off an event that can happen out of the blue for an unknown cause. But the second fall at Aintree was confirmation that something was seriously amiss. That third and last fall was a flashing red light.
“no other champ has had as many falls over hurdles in their entire career as he has had this year.” That was Chris Cook trying to explain it all in the Racing Post last December.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/the-front-runner/how-the-mighty-have-fallen-has-any-champion-lost-their-love-for-jumping-quite-like-constitution-hill-agRny4F7gOGo/
In that article he did go on to cite Istabraq’s two falls at the end of his career, at about the same age as Constitution Hill.
Great actors can suffer from stage fright, which means they cannot perform. There is no explanation and for most it passes away after a time. For some, it is career ending. When it happened to Laurence Olivier, he went to the front of the stage and said, “I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen, I have been taken ill”. There is a long list of well known actors and performers, Hugh Grant, Alison Steadman, Stephen Fry, Barbra Streisand, Ian Holm, Lenny Henry, Juliet Stevenson, Tim Roth, etc.
Horses are sentient beings and we do not really know how they perceive themselves or the world. A trainer told me that when a horse has a bleed, it frightens it and it does not forget it. He said that those horses are never the same afterwards. Many comments here refer to the white topped, padded hurdles as a factor. That may be true and may be related to something that Constitution Hill once experienced, its perception, vision, judgement, any one of many unknown factors.
Constitution Hill has, for whatever unknown reason, then, developed a disastrous mindset about jumping hurdles. However many it jumps at Seven Barrows in training makes no difference. Unless Nicky Henderson can discover, incontrovertibly, what is causing Constitution Hill to make these elementary mistakes at hurdles in races, he would be wrong and foolhardy and more, to put the horse through what must be a nightmare for it again. There is a terrible risk that it could end in a tragedy that is not worth taking.
The horse is telling Henderson the same thing each time. He must listen and accept that there are some things about horses that have no explanation and which even he, the master of seven barrows, cannot remedy. He should be wise enough to know that.
Constitution Hill has surely given enough to its owner, Henderson and indeed to all of us who revere it.