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I’m quite sure he was pretty sore after his Newcastle fall which would easily explain a swollen knee. Why would he bang his knee that badly during a routine workout? The flat run makes sense because they can’t really assess the horse. It has yet to complete in four hurdles starts and the frosty period plus the knee make it difficult to get him spot on for the Champion Hurdle. The Flat race would open options on the level plus it would get him fitter for a possible spring target.
Is any other fancied festival horse having a flat spin in Feb …. Henderson has lost the plot
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
“I did think that the new white fences were the problem but watching the horses jump them over the past few days has made me realise that all the other horses seem to be fine with them.”
That’s because very few horses jump like Constitution Hill. He jumps with a long, low trajectory … giving him almost no margin for error. These awful white hurdles lean forward an extra couple of inches or so. The tops of these hurdles are solid padding as opposed to a row of twigs. I’d bet that these ghastly hurdles would affect any horse that has a similar jumping style to Constitution Hill. Personally, I’m staggered that racing officials are so bloody slow to fully realise this.
“If anyone wants to put on a Flat mile and a half maiden then please let us know.”
How entitled does that sound?
I suppose it makes a change from using Newbury for a racecourse gallop.
Why don’t the run the Champion with a space in the hurdle for the hill to run through , if any other horses through it then are disqualified mind …
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
”Is any other fancied festival horse having a flat spin in Feb …. Henderson has lost the plot”
HDLG
If he does indeed use a flat race as prep for the Champion Hurdle, I agree that the man has lost the plot.
If this is his intention, the Jockey Club must step in and stop him. Never will so many cameras have been trained on a Champion Hurdle. If Constitution Hill breaks his neck, racing has just handed the antis all they need. Not a single defence will remain and there’s a fair chance NH racing will be gone by the early ’30s.
Just to forestall questions, I say the Jockey Club reather than the BHA because the BHA doesn’t have the balls, and Henderson is very close with the Jockey Club and they with him.
Using a flat prep run before Cheltenham may just be the safest option available to him – on his current form we have little to no reason to believe that he would be able to safely put in a clear round of jumping in a Kingwell or any other hurdle race prior to Cheltenham.
All we have heard during these falls is that he has been jumping like his old self at home whenever he is schooled yet when he gets to the course he keeps making the exact same mistake and quite frankly (to me) it is neither a new white type hurdle or his jumping technique issue……there is something in the horse’s head that is causing him to change his mind mid leap and subsequently step on the hurdle halfway up it.
At this stage, I am very much at the point of past caring (outside of not wanting to see him seriously hurt himself or potentially kill himself with a further fall of course) as to whether we ever see him jump a hurdle in public again.
At this point connections are akin to playing a game of Russian roulette in asking him to jump hurdles again, as at some point the law of averages will swing to where he doesn’t walk away unscathed (or at all) and if that just happened to be at the Cheltenham Festival and people outside of racing had a surface look at his case to see that the horse had fallen three times in his last four races…..then you can well imagine just how gleefully the anti horse racing brigade would spin that to the general public.
It is a crying shame considering he had the hurdling world at his feet following his first Champion win but maybe this is just the horse’s odd way of telling us he just doesn’t fancy doing it anymore.
Should the Champion hurdler not be the best jumper of a hurdle in the country …. not the worst
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
Everyone makes good points here. This horae has been great and has won a lot of prize money. By all means try him on the flat, but otherwise he should be retired.
What it he runs in the Champion , falls and brings down Sir Gino ….
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
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