With so much of the jumps season often reduced to an exercise in picking as easy a route to the Cheltenham Festival as possible, Saturday’s BETMGM Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle is a welcome hark back to more competitive times.
The return of Constitution Hill, the highest rated hurdler of the last decade, is no ease back into competitive action.
Up against Nicky Henderson’s brilliant but flawed star is The New Lion, Dan Skelton’s unbeaten starlet and the new kid on the hurdling block. Travelling over from Ireland is another unbeaten talent, Anzadam, so completing a trio of horses towards the top of the Champion Hurdle betting.
Almost superfluous to calculations is the reigning Champion Hurdle winner Golden Ace, the mare that memorably rewarded her connections’ competitive pluck by picking up the pieces of an extraordinary championship at Cheltenham last March.
RM Block
Golden Ace flopped on her reappearance at the start of the month but the ‘big three’ are all getting their seasons under way and go straight into taking each other on.
It smacks of hurdling’s golden period in the 1970s when a lack of opportunities meant a golden generation of talent routinely took each other on through the season before winding up at Cheltenham.
The Fighting Fifth’s roll of honour features Night Nurse, Birds Nest and Sea Pigeon, names that are still evocative half a century later despite having taken turns beating each other.
At his peak, including when landing the 2022 Fighting Fifth, Constitution Hill fitted easily into the list of such all-time greats on ratings. But rarely has an outstanding reputation needed such massive rehabilitation.
Once seemingly unbeatable, Constitution Hill’s performances have veered wildly from fabulous to just plain flaky.
A fall in last year’s Champion Hurdle saw his unbeaten record disappear. Another spill at Aintree smacked of technical vulnerability in his jumping. It was a subsequent effort at Punchestown, though, that means attention will be on his psychological state too.
On the back of two falls, racing looked the last thing Constitution Hill wanted to be doing in Punchestown. A ballooning effort over the first flight suggested a horse that had lost confidence, and he barely raised a gallop afterwards.
The Henderson camp have been making confident noises about his work and schooling this autumn but must realise better than most how Grade One action will be the acid test.
The New Lion has his own questions to answer, none more so than if he has the latent cruising speed for his first ever start at two miles. As for Anzadam, Willie Mullins’s decision to throw such an unexposed sort into the deep end, smacks of ambition and some confidence. The Fighting Fifth is a rare Grade One the Irishman hasn’t won yet.
All of it means that just after 2pm on Saturday the Champion Hurdle picture could be transformed. A return to peak Constitution Hill would certainly be a popular outcome. Racing loves its flawed heroes. But such a field so early in the season is already a win for the sport.
Total Recall (2017) is the only Irish-trained winner of Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup in the last 45 years although that dire record hasn’t stopped 10 horses travelling from Ireland for a race that used be known as the Hennessy. Mullins, who trained Total Recall, has four of them.
