NICKY Henderson says he has no worries about the campaigning of Constitution Hill with regard to the seven-year-old’s bid for back-to-back wins in the Champion Hurdle, referring to his stable star as “the special one”.

The Michael Buckley-owned gelding holds a perfect eight-from-eight record over hurdles and bids to give his trainer a record extending 10th win in the opening day feature at the Cheltenham Festival next month.

He is a 1/3 shot to do it but will be having only his second run of this campaign having initially missed his intended seasonal debut in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle due to heavy ground and then his intended second run in the Unibet Hurdle on Cheltenham’s Trials Day due to a poor scope.

Henderson welcomed members of the press to his Seven Barrows base on Thursday and when asked if he had any worries regarding the campaign of Constitution Hill thus far, he replied: “No that doesn’t worry me. You’re not going to suddenly see him bolt off just because he’s fresh – he doesn’t do bolting off, thank God!

Ultimate professional

“He’s just an ultimate professional and you can do anything with him. It doesn’t matter how fast they want to go. If they want to go very fast then fine. If they want to go very slow then okay, but we might want to go on. You don’t need pacemakers or anything for him. If I want to gallop him I can gallop him on his own. I don’t need to have other people. He’s much easier (than other horses).

“There’s an element of … pressure’s not the right thing, but responsibility certainly comes into it, because he is the special one at the moment and long may it last.”

Henderson told media that Constitution Hill will have an ‘away day’ before the Cheltenham Festival but at this stage does not know exactly where or when that will be. However, he stressed that he is pleased with his stable star and believes he is “exactly where we want to be”.

He went on: “We had a couple of weeks off in the middle where he wasn’t quite clean and I would like to go and have an away day. We’re in good shape. I’d be pretty happy that we’re exactly where we were with him this time last year or this time coming into Christmas.

“At Christmas obviously he had been ready because he should have gone to Newcastle so he was very well prepped for the Christmas Hurdle. But he is again here – straight after Christmas he was back in work because we were trying to get to Cheltenham but he didn’t miss anything there.

“His weight’s good, his mind’s good – his mind’s always good. I thought he was exceptional last Saturday. Admittedly it was very, very foggy (on the gallops) but he was moving beautifully and the ground was beautiful.

“He’s very, very professional. That’s the secret to him. His mind game is so good. You can see the difference between him and Jonbon. Jonbon is always having a look at what’s happening.”

Contrast

In contrast to Constitution Hill, his main market rival in the Champion Hurdle, last year’s runner-up State Man, has been busy again this term, recording three more Grade 1 victories at home and is no bigger than 5/2 to exact revenge next month.

However Henderson sounded somewhat combative with regard to the challenge that the Willie Mullins-trained horse presents. Told that reports suggested State Man looked “better than ever” at the Dublin Racing Festival, Henderson laughed: “Did he? He looked the same horse to me.

“He’s a very good horse, there’s no doubt about that. He gets his job done every time, doesn’t he? But then we’ve beaten him once so let’s hope we can do it again. He only just beat First Street in the County Hurdle you know? And we were giving him weight. We know where he is!”

Best of the bunch

Henderson trained See You Then to Champion Hurdle glory in 1985, 1986 and 1987, Punjabi in 2009, Binocular in 2010, Buveur D’Air in 2017 and 2018 and Epatante in 2020.

But if last year’s winner Constitution Hill can repeat the feat next month, his trainer believes he could go down in history as the best of the bunch.

Henderson continued: “Well I should think we’re probably going to find out. We’ll very likely find out one way or another. He might well be … or he won’t be.

“There’s one thing they nearly all have in common – their ability to jump a hurdle as fast as you’ve ever seen a horse jump a hurdle. See You Then was exactly the same – from A to B. Binocular was the same - they all were. ‘Tent’ (My Tent Or Yours) was the same – he never won one but he was second in three Champion Hurdles. Buveur D’Air and Epatante – they were all electric hurdlers and this horse, as you’ve seen, he is just so fast and low and deadly accurate.

“You’ve got to be deadly accurate because if you get one wrong – and Buveur D’Air did get one wrong in his third year – the margin for error, when you do what these horses do, is so low. It’s about pinpoint accuracy, but if you’re an inch out, which he nearly did last year … the only reason he got away with it is that he was a fresh horse going into the last.

“Not many other horses would have survived that because they would’ve been tired, but he wasn’t remotely tired. Actually you could see him in mid-air adjust, because he had to get out the other side and he did. Because he was as fresh as paint.”

NICKY Henderson has insisted Shishkin “deserves” to be in this year’s Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup and has likened criticism of his performances this season to that of a “criminal who’s just been let out of prison”.

The nine-year-old has won 10 of his 15 career starts over fences, including most recently the Grade 2 Betfair Denman Chase at Newbury on February 10th.

However, he refused to start when he was the 8/13 favourite for the Nirvana Spa 1965 Chase at Ascot in November and then unseated jockey Nico de Boinville just after clearing the penultimate fence while leading the King George on St Stephen’s Day.

“I think the Gold Cup is an open race,” Henderson said. “It’s open enough to be in it anyway. He deserves to be in it. He would have been first or second in the King George, let’s face it, and I honestly think he would have won.

“But it was still a hell of a performance for his first run of the year. Even if he finished second that was as good a trial as you were going to see and then he did that nicely at Newbury so I think we come into it on a pretty good stride, which is pretty essential isn’t it? …

“It’s funny how going into Newbury the other day he was suddenly treated like some sort of criminal who’s just been let out of prison! ‘If he doesn’t show up today where is he?!’

“I mean he’s done nothing wrong. The King George wasn’t his fault. He didn’t fall, he just knocked his leg. Anyone can do that. It was just pure bad luck.

“I have to say that Ascot was his fault. It was certainly nobody else’s! Yeah, he’d been a naughty boy one day at Ascot but that doesn’t make him a criminal and that’s what it felt like going into Newbury. Everyone was saying ‘will he turn up?’ But why wouldn’t he? What did he do wrong in the King George? He’d have won the King George, I know he would.”

Shishkin will need to show every ounce of stamina he has if he is to stay the three miles and two and a half furlongs of the Gold Cup trip.

But Henderson pointed to his victory in the Aintree Bowl at Aintree in April last year over three miles and one furlong and added: “Nico was happy enough half way through the King George to say ‘we’re not going quick enough – I’m going on’ and that’s against proven stayers, so he was obviously pretty confident he was going to stay.

“We know he stays – I mean look at him at Aintree last year. It looked like he was going to need all of the three miles to get to Ahoy Senor and when he got there he was gone. He finished very strongly at Newbury and I think he would have finished very strongly at Kempton, but we’ll never know.”

Cheekpieces

Henderson went on to say that it is “very unlikely” that Shishkin will be seen in cheekpieces next month.

He said: “I won’t say I haven’t thought about it since Newbury, but I would say it’s very unlikely. I can’t see us doing it if I’m honest. I promise you that it was nothing to do with why he didn’t start at Ascot…

“He just races a little bit behind the bridle sometimes. Ruby (Walsh) was at me the whole time – ‘you’ve got to put cheekpieces on this horse!’ So I did what Ruby told me to do and look where it got us! It didn’t cause the problem but I certainly left them off for the King George and at Newbury.

“I think if I was going to have done it then I’d have done it at Newbury to see what effect it might have. We had tried them before Ascot. I’d never run a horse with cheekpieces before schooling in them. That’s really a safety piece. Running a horse in blinkers or cheekpieces – you’d always school it first.”