How good could this one be? Constitution Hill leads home a one-two for Nicky Henderson with an extraordinary performance in the 2022 Sky Bet Supreme Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham.
Sent off the 9-4 joint-favourite for the Festival opener, Nico de Boinville's mount simply glided up the famous hill to account for stablemate Jonbon, with Willie Mullins' Kilcruit well-beaten third.
The turning point of the Grade One was at the third-last flight, when the pace-setting Mullins-trained Dysart Dynamo crashed out, leaving the Henderson pair alone up front.
There was little between the duo going to two out - but Constitution Hill was going the better and soon took the lead. The five-year-old, owned by Michael Buckley, quickly put daylight between himself and Jonbon to score by 22 lengths.
Winning trainer Nicky Henderson said: "The three of them were a long way clear by the time Dysart Dynamo fell, and no one wants to see that happen. Jonbon is a very good horse - for Constitution Hill to do that to him is remarkable.
“It’s extraordinary that he is a genuine two-miler - I don’t know why, he’d stay two and half standing on his head, I think. He’s got an enormous turn of foot. He’s always just racing in two gears below everyone else, because it’s all so easy for him, and then you press the button and the turbo works. That’s the way he is at home and that’s the way he is on the racecourse, which is lovely.
"I’d be very surprised if anything could have done that to Jonbon, so he must be extraordinary. The hype horse actually earlier on in the year was Jonbon, and then this fella woke up from his slumbers at home, and I stopped bothering Barry [Geraghty], asking him what this was he’d sent me, because we suddenly realised he was very good.
"He’s been very good, it was just how much he actually knew, because he’d only run in two hurdle races, with four runners in each. To go out there and go at that gallop - that’s the extraordinary thing, that he could travel so easily at that pace, and then pick it up. To find gears at the end of a headlong gallop like that is extraordinary."
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4 окт 2024
