Constitution Hill a once-in-a-lifetime talent but racing offers no guarantees | Cheltenham Festival

One of the earliest recorded uses of the phrase “a racing certainty” appears in the Monthly Magazine in October 1837, in an article recalling the St Leger of 1834. Plenipotentiary – or Plenipo to his fans – was the odds-on favourite, having won an unusually strong running of the Derby at Epsom earlier in the year.

“Plenipo, after beating the best lot of horses probably ever seen in the south of England, was sent to Doncaster,” it recounts. “If ever there was a racing certainty, it was that, barring accidents, he must win the Leger.”

He turned out to be anything but. As the article also relates, on “the last betting day” at Tattersall’s in London, “a commission arrived from a certain party to lay against him to any amount”. In the minutes before the race, poor Plenipo showed every sign of having been doped, and he finished unplaced behind a 40-1 chance.

Ancient history perhaps, but a reminder too that as Constitution Hill, the sport’s latest apparent “cert”, prepares to defend his unbeaten record in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham on Tuesday, “must” is a dangerous word in racing.

Not one opponent in Constitution Hill’s five starts to date has caused him even the slightest concern. He is the hottest favourite at next week’s Festival meeting, and the heavy hitters will be ready to wade in with five- and six-figure bets. Yet however strong a big-race favourite might look on paper, it still needs to go out and do the business on grass.

Michael Buckley, Constitution Hill’s owner, has spent a lifetime in racing, first as a punter and racegoer and then an owner. As a teenager, he remembers backing another hot favourite at Cheltenham, Mill House, when he was beaten by Arkle in the 1964 Gold Cup. But he cannot recall anything quite like this.

“It’s extraordinary that there’s such a swell of support for him,” Buckley says. “I had lunch with Nicky [Henderson, his trainer] yesterday, and he said that [earlier stable stars] Sprinter Sacre and Altior had about 10 races each before they became public horses, but this horse has done it in no time at all.

“It’s very flattering and I love it, and it’s exhausting in a way because it plays on your mind and you keep getting stopped in the street by people. It would be a lot more restful if the horse could speak.”

It was the third start of Constitution Hill’s career, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Festival last year, which marked him out as a freakish, once-in-a-lifetime talent.

Having tracked a strong pace set by two high-class opponents, Nico de Boinville’s mount brushed them aside in the straight and pulled 22 lengths clear at the line. He covered the two-mile trip around five-and-a-half seconds faster than Honeysuckle, the Champion Hurdle winner, a couple of hours later, the equivalent of at least 20 lengths. And he did it all while giving the impression that he was barely out of second gear.

That performance alone elevated him into the all-time hurdling greats at the Timeform rating operation, which has been assessing jumps horses since the early 1960s. “There are only five horses that have ever run to a higher rating, and he’s achieved it in a shorter time,” Phil Turner, Timeform’s hurdles specialist, says.

“The only one to come close [as a novice] is Golden Cygnet in 1977-78. That shows that he’s a once-in-a-generation talent, basically, and all his wins have been in the same manner. Whatever the opposition, he seems to put up the same performance.”

Golden Cygnet, though, is also a reminder of how quickly fortunes can turn over jumps. A month to the day after his 15-length win in the Supreme in March 1978, he suffered a fatal injury in the Scottish Champion Hurdle at Ayr.

“There’s so little margin for error for the top two-milers,” Turner says. “Constitution Hill looks an electric jumper but were he to get one wrong, it’s not going to be a small mistake. It’s the same over fences, we’ve seen a few odds-on shots bomb out in the Champion Chase in recent years, and you feel that if you’re just five or 10% off your game, it’s magnified by the cut-throat nature of a race like that.”

Buckley has spent his working life buying and selling businesses, making finely balanced judgments about risk and reward, but he remains grateful that there is no requirement to back his horse on Tuesday. “You have to look at things from as optimistic an angle as you can,” he says. “If not, why ever buy a horse in the first place?

“No horse is absolutely rock-solid, but he’s about as bombproof as a horse can get. He’s very relaxed and he’s got a fantastic mind, so he doesn’t get stewed up whether he’s in front or behind, and he doesn’t pull or really grab the bit until Nico asks him to.

“But there’s always things that can go wrong. I think he got a bit of a shock at Cheltenham last year when Dysart Dynamo fell [three out], he grabbed hold of the bit then and put in a huge leap at that hurdle. But then, if Nico hadn’t pulled him outside, he’d have been right behind that horse, so that might have been catastrophic.

“He could get into trouble by being a bit too overconfident and cocky. I thought his jumping in the straight at Newcastle [in November] was utterly ridiculous, he launched himself off and it’s pretty scary stuff.

“Most people would say [his price of around 1-3] is nuts, but to be honest, I don’t have to think about it because it’s the Champion Hurdle. Winning that would be thrill enough in itself.”