THE news this week has all been about THAT gallop at Kempton, with Constitution Hill’s participation in the Champion Hurdle now in serious doubt after working and scoping poorly, but aside from the Champion Hurdler, is there more to be concerned about regarding the form of the Seven Barrows team?

Last weekend Nicky Henderson sent out four fancied runners and three of them pulled up, while a trio sent to Doncaster on the Wednesday prior to that all suffered the same fate.

Henderson usually has a lull a few weeks before Cheltenham, and after Shishkin won the Ascot Chase last season, the yard went the rest of February without a winner, albeit with limited runners. Of course, it could be argued that Cheltenham was also a disappointment for the yard a year ago, with only Constitution Hill scoring and several runners failing to meet expectations.

In 2022, Henderson also had a poor spell in February, and one which mirrors the current one more closely, with 11 of 29 runners over jumps from the stable in the second half of February pulling up.

Marie’s Rock and Constitution Hill both won at Cheltenham that year, while five more runners were second, so the evidence is there that the form can be recovered quickly.

One reason why the results tend to be poor in that quiet period is that the very best horses aren’t running and many of those performing poorly are the stable’s lesser lights.

Blowouts

Given that at least two of last weekend’s blowouts were horses with Cheltenham prospects, the recent results are a little more concerning, and it would be a surprise if Constitution Hill is the only horse in the stable with mucus in his airways.

Such things tend not to be isolated incidents after all, but the wellbeing of the yard will be further tested this weekend, particularly with Under Control seemingly set up for a lucrative double in the Morebattle and County Hurdles.

The stable has other runners, but none being primed for Cheltenham in a fortnight, and less should be read into how that cohort perform; the daughter of Doctor Dino looks the true barometer of the stable’s fortunes in the short term.

The mare has been the subject of positive reports and will be expected to go very close at Kelso off a mark which looks lenient in light of her defeat of Iberico Lord at Sandown last spring.

A win will give confidence to followers of the stable, but if she checks out as tamely as she did in the Gerry Feilden at Newbury in December, then a pall will be cast over Seven Barrows which might prove hard to lift.

IT’S easy enough to lump this in with the above, but I had a look at some stats for Nico de Boinville on the back of hearing a good judge mention that he rates Henderson’s stable jockey as a superior rider over fences to hurdles.

One of the easy mistakes to make through basis statistical analysis is to label a jockey as “better over fences” due to a superior strike rate compared to hurdles, but it’s long been the case that field sizes over fences are smaller on average than those over hurdles and the majority of top jockeys have a better strike-rate due to this fact alone.

As a result of that, I thought I’d have a look at those figures in greater detail.

I know from experience that Nico de Boinville is one of those riders who fall outside this definition, with a better record over hurdles not altogether surprising as he rides almost exclusively for Nicky Henderson these days and his retained stable have long had a reputation for producing top-class novice hurdlers year on year.

Discrepancy

Digging deeper into the numbers, however, I found that there was a greater discrepancy between the hurdle and chase stats than expected, and while analysing the stable’s form in the weeks leading up to and through Cheltenham in the last couple of seasons, it was a shock to see how moderate the numbers are for a jockey forever associated with chasers like Sprinter Sacre, Altior and Shishkin.

From February through April for the last couple of seasons including last month, Nico has ridden 33 winners over hurdles, producing a big profit for those betting blind at SP.

In the same period, however, he’s only ridden six winners over fences (all at short odds and two at odds-on), and has pulled his mounts up exactly three times as often.

Since St Stephen’s Day, de Boinville has ridden much more often over hurdles than fences, but his record on chasers in that period reads PUP2613PP, with the only winner provided by Shishkin in the Denman Chase, and that makes for worrying reading.

That’s not a reflection on the rider’s ability and his catalogue of big-race wins testifies to his talent in the saddle, for all he’s not everyone’s idea of the supreme stylist.

De Boinville had a fall in late December which saw him miss a few weeks, but while he’s clearly had time to get back to full fitness, it’s the feeling of riding winners which he might need going into the biggest meeting of the year.

I thought watching last week’s racing at the time that his rides on Tweed Skirt and Arclight at Kempton were subdued by his normal standards but put that down to the horses being under the weather.

Looking back on the rides, I would be concerned that Nico is riding like a man lacking confidence, and that might be a bigger worry for him with the Cheltenham Festival just 10 days away.

None of his booked rides this weekend are over the larger obstacles, and while I know plenty of jockeys looking forward to Cheltenham are loath to ride risky mounts over fences in the week or so before the big meeting, that might not be the wisest approach in this instance.