Assuming a mark that hasn’t already been elevated wildly above the 120 which Trueshan defied in the same race not so long ago, and given effectiveness on Tapeta is clearly not in doubt, taking in the Northumberland Plate with Constitution Hill makes a degree of appeal.
It would render irrelevant those concerns not unjustifiably already raised as regards campaigning him on potentially quick summer ground. Indeed, isn’t a dry, clement summer likelier to make the Tapeta ride standard to slow, such are the way these things work?
It was certainly the target we were gravitating towards when discussing the matter in the Duncombe Park ptp commentary box at the weekend. There may well be plenty of easy/soft-ground Group races on the continent that would take little winning, but these will pass by unnoticed by a trainer who largely eschews mainland European targets. Taking the same Compiegne Listed hurdle twice, albeit eight years apart, and only because of some historical familial links to the race, does not make Nicky Henderson a student of the European race programme.
You might rightly theorise that a Plate shouldn’t rate the sum total of connections’ ambitions. I’m admittedly not wholly unsympathetic to that argument. At the same time, however, I’m sure they’ll have their own quality threshold below which they wouldn’t want Constitution Hill to dip, either at the risk of humiliating him or (going back to the social contract point) leaving them open to criticism if he picked up a terminal injury in pursuit of a smallish purse.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.