“He just looks as though he has a bit more quality about him”

Nicky Henderson left Newbury racecourse with a smile on Tuesday after watching his stable star Constitution Hill put the finishing touches on his Fighting Fifth preparations.  

A winner of the 2023 Champion Hurdle, Constitution Hill looks all set to take on Dan Skelton's The New Lion and potentially Willie Mullins' Anzadam in the BetMGM Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on the 29th of November.  

Under regular rider Nico de Boinville, he breezed past both the pacesetting Therapist and Act Of Innocence to finish well clear of his two stablemates at the Coral Gold Cup gallops morning.  

"He's been in good form all the way through, and it's been nice to be able to come out and show the world that," said Henderson. 

"If that was a race I'd be about as confident as you could ever be about a horse. I really was pretty certain that this would go according to plan." 

The Michael Buckley-owned eight-year-old missed last season's Fighting Fifth which was eventually run at Sandown due to the abandonment of Newcastle and instead made a winning return to action in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton before successfully going on to strike in the International Hurdle at Cheltenham. However, his campaign soon came firmly off the rails with falls in the Champion and Aintree Hurdle preceding a wide-margin defeat under James Bowen in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle.  

"That was a brutal day at Punchestown," said Henderson.  "The whole thing was a chapter of disasters. It was my fault; he should never have gone to Punchestown. He quite rightly went to Punchestown, and it was over when the tapes went up, he turned and faced the other way as to say, 'Dad, I can't do this again'.  

Constitution Hill remains the 7/4 second favourite behind Dan Skelton's The New Lion (Evs) with Paddy Power and Henderson firmly believes he has his star right back to his best.  

"Watching him walk along there, he's lengthened a bit and got slinkier," he explained. "I always thought he was a bit of a block, a square horse, very solid, but he looks to me like he's stretched out a bit. He just looks as though he has a bit more quality about him. 

"He did go to Worcester as well but I've no idea what he went around with as it was one of their schooling mornings, although we didn't jump.  

"Half an hour earlier The New Lion went around, so it was lucky they didn't get drawn in the same heat! They wouldn't have known it was us, he went to Worcester called Harry that day. He always been known to us as Harry to stop the intern or nurse knowing that Constitution Hill was in the vets. Even when the vet bills come through it's invoiced to Harry!" 

On the prospect of potentially heading into the Fighting Fifth this time around as not the market leader, Henderson added: "He's going to be no fitter nor forward or backward than he was two years ago when he won the Fighting Fifth. I accept it's going to be very interesting, but everyone said that with Lossiemouth in the Christmas Hurdle. 

"This will have brought him on, and he's got to have another school and probably another bit on Sunday or Monday.  

"The jumping has got to be polished off in the next week. I was going to take him to Kempton, but they've brought the hurdles to us rather than us taking him there. 

"We've done a lot of things. We literally took him to pieces, tightened every nut and bolt before putting him back to together with loads of people's advice and a bit more."