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Telegraph
10-03-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Nicky Henderson: ‘The horses know Cheltenham is here, this bunch are the best for some time'
In a departure from the conventional Cheltenham build-up, Nicky Henderson spent last Wednesday with his staff at a tenpin bowling alley in Swindon celebrating the stable's first coup of the spring – Simone Meloni winning employee of the year at the the Godolphin industry awards. Henderson's eyesight is, he readily admits, not the best. When Constitution Hill ploughed through the last in the Unibet Hurdle at Cheltenham on Trials Day, he joked that it was just as well he could not see it. In Swindon he claimed two strikes (all 10 pins) despite not being able to see the end of the bowling lane. If that was beginner's luck, there is nothing lucky about his training career. It is 40 years since See You Then, a 16-1 shot, under a supremely cool ride from Steve Smith Eccles, displayed what would become a trademark burst of speed to power away from his rivals up the hill. It was the first of See You Then's three Champion Hurdles, the first of Henderson's nine winners of the race, and the first of his 73 Festival winners. The usual trajectory for a trainer is; starts small, does well, hits the heights, stays at the top of the mountain for a decade or two before some sort of terminal decline as the zest of youth and ambition wanes, then younger owners seek someone from their own generation to train for them. Henderson's four decades at the top are remarkable in any sport. 1985 Champion Hurdle - See You Then — History of Horse Racing (@horsevault) December 10, 2024 It is a job to know whether Henderson, 74, had the foresight back in 1985 to see that winning at the Festival would become so important or whether, by making it what was then his unique selling point, he set a trend which his colleagues would follow. But though he would probably prefer not to be pigeon-holed as such – he argues that his two odds-on shots this week, Constitution Hill and Jonbon, have both won their Grade Ones along the way – he is the ultimate eggs-in-one-basket trainer; his stable's year, the mornings in horizontal rain, essentially boils down to the next four days. It was, therefore, like a dagger to his heart when a bug ripped through the yard 10 days before last year's Festival, ruling all of the stable's big shots – Constitution Hill, Jonbon and Sir Gino – out of the meeting in their first Cheltenham blank for 16 years. This year he might consider himself a winner before the meeting even starts with a squad of 20, a strong chance of winning three of the big four races (Champion Hurdle with Constitution Hill, the Champion Chase with Jonbon and Stayers' Hurdle with Lucky Place), the Triumph Hurdle with Lulamba and Arkle with Jango Baie. That's before you take the handicaps into consideration. 'It's nice to be in a position to get excited again,' he says. 'We're lucky to have a good bunch of horses, the best for some time. With that it brings the pressure back on a bit and it's become very busy again. I'm quite happy for the hounds of Fleet Street to chase me day and night because the day they don't, you don't have any decent horses and it's time to pack up. We've got four or five strong chances and lots of possibles but if you listen to these preview nights everyone's got lots of fancies.' A typical conversation between Henderson and the press begins with a flustered, even slightly annoyed, trainer saying he only has two minutes to talk. Invariably half an hour later the canary is still singing. When he moved to Seven Barrows in 1992 it took him, he says, five years to work out how to use the gallops to their best effect and find a spot for an all-weather gallop for the day-to-day routine stuff. 'I looked everywhere and I was sitting in the kitchen one summer's day and saw a combine on a field opposite carve the perfect strip up the bank to a beech wood on the hill,' he says of his eureka moment. 'I rang the farmer and he said 'I wondered when you'd finally work that out.'' I always remember Mick Channon telling me that the best thing that can happen to a horse is to get beaten – an experience Constitution Hill, ready to regain his title, has yet to taste because of the pressure it builds. Ironically, the better the horse the harder the watch. 'In a little way, yes,' agrees Henderson. 'We're the ones responsible for him and making sure he shows up on the day or there'll be a lot of people who will be disappointed and I don't like disappointed people. He just travels, he frightens you a bit jumping-wise. 'We've been very lucky with these Champion Hurdlers over the years and they have one thing in common; their ability to cross a hurdle very quickly. The danger of them all is, and Buveur d'Air fell foul of it in his third year, is that the margin is very small when you're timber-topping. Get it wrong by an inch and you're in trouble. 'He's only made two errors in his career, the last in his Champion two years ago when he was crazy long but got away with it because he was fresh, not tired, and very much again the other day in the Unibet. 'That was just being silly. There was a degree of self-preservation but I suspect a tired horse wouldn't have found a leg. He's mentally pretty agile too. He's got that last hurdle wrong twice.' Constitution Hill SOARS over a flight as he schools just six days before his date with destiny in the Champion Hurdle 😍 — Racing Post (@RacingPost) March 5, 2025 It is not only the humans at Seven Barrows that know the Festival is here. 'He [Constitution Hill] has had his last school now and, much the same as Jonbon, it's flicked a switch. They know, the week before. There's no point in schooling them because we can't teach them anything but they're very much on the button now. They seem to know, it lights the fuse which has to burn quietly for a week. They know it's coming, they're quite intelligent. 'I don't think there's a secret to it (his longevity at the top),' says the great adapter, well aware that training these days is about so much more than just getting a horse fit. 'If there was, you'd know it because I'm not good at keeping secrets. I think we've been very lucky, the owners are the best, they're all good friends and we enjoy it together. Some have gone but the faithfuls are very faithful and it's got to be fun. 'There are two lots of important people, two main ingredients, in this game; one is the owners, two is the team behind us, that's crucial, every single person is crucial. There are a lot of important two-legged people and a lot of four-legged ones. If both of those are top class then you've got a good chance. You couldn't go anywhere without either. 'Why we all get so ridiculously wound up about this whole parade is that you know what can go wrong. Look at Sir Gino [still with the vet after picking up a 'dreadful' infection]. He'd have been our poster boy and he's not out of the woods yet. Anything can happen – it's very squeaky bum going into the Festival. Poor owners, I don't think they like getting a call from me this week whether they are JP [McManus] with lots of horses or Michael [Buckley] with one. 'Why does it last and how long will it last for? I don't know but while I've got these sorts of horses I'm not going anywhere. I'm not letting anyone else have these, they're all mine. The owners will tell me when to go.' A good week, some of those eggs hatching into chickens, and you can rest assured Henderson is likely to be out celebrating with his 'lads' again on Saturday night, the drinks once again on Seven Barrows.
The Guardian
17-02-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Henderson seeks Cheltenham redemption with star turns after 2024 blank
Forty years on from his first Cheltenham festival success, with See You Then in the 1985 Champion Hurdle, Nicky Henderson is still at the peak of his profession – and still taking nothing for granted. 'The only time I've ever been confident about anything was Altior's Supreme [Novice Hurdle in 2016],' Henderson said on Monday. 'It didn't matter what Willie [Mullins] brought over that year, he wasn't going to beat him. 'But we always have said, you'd settle for one [winner at the Cheltenham festival]. If you have one on the first day then you get the bit between your teeth and you can say, OK, let's kick on. That one is absolutely crucial, and didn't we half find out last year, because none is horrendous.' Setbacks, disappointments and frustrations flew at Henderson from all directions both before and during last year's festival meeting, as star turns including Constitution Hill, Jonbon and Sir Gino were last-minute scratches as a bug swept through the stable at the worst possible moment of the year. The handful of horses from his yard that made it to post showed little or nothing of their best form, and Henderson's eventual blank over the four days was his first since 2008. There has been fresh misfortune already before this year's meeting with Sir Gino, the likely odds-on favourite for the Arkle Trophy on the meeting's opening day, ruled out with an injury. But the most successful British-based trainer at the meeting over the last four decades still has several big chances across the week, including three current Grade One favourites in Constitution Hill, in the Champion Hurdle on 11 March; Jonbon, in the Champion Chase the following day, and Lulamba in the Triumph Hurdle, the opener on the final afternoon on 14 March. All three were on parade here on Monday along with Palladium, last year's German Derby winner, who is also on course for the Triumph, and clearly in excellent health. The market leaders for the feature events on the first two days of the festival have sharply differing characters. '[Constitution Hill] is the most laid-back person you'll ever come across, and the other one is a complete fuss-pot and can't stand still for two minutes,' Henderson said. 'The other horse [Constitution Hill] would stand still for two days, I could tie him up to a telegraph pole and come back and get him in the morning and he'd be fine.' Constitution Hill, who remains unbeaten after 10 starts over hurdles, has raced just four times since winning the Champion Hurdle in 2023, and spent a year on the sidelines between his two wins in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton in December 2023 and 2024. But he appeared to be back to something close to his best on Boxing Day last year and followed up in comfortable fashion – bar an unexpected mistake at the last – in the International Hurdle at Cheltenham last month. 'Funnily enough, from my point of view, I hated Cheltenham the other day,' Henderson says. 'It absolutely killed me, because I think we went into Kempton with half a mind that he could easily get beaten, and if he did, we felt we'll be alright in March… [but] Cheltenham was something else. That day absolutely did me in because it was sort of a no-win situation, wasn't it? 'His work is the same [as it was before his latest start]. I suspect Nico [de Boinville, his big-race jockey] will have a sit on him this week just to see where he is and how he feels but I suppose he'd better jump a hurdle at some stage. You hardly want to go in [to the Champion Hurdle] with the last hurdle he jumped being that one.' Next month's Champion Hurdle promises to be one of deepest and strongest for many years, with State Man, last year's winner, and the high-class mares Brighterdaysahead and Lossiemouth – the runner-up in the Christmas Hurdle – all seemingly being aimed at the race. 'You're certainly going to get pace,' Henderson said. 'It's what she [Brighterdaysahead] has always done [but] the one good thing is that he can travel off any pace. The pace that Lossiemouth found difficult at Kempton was no worry to him, he can travel at a very high speed.' There was a hint of reception that Henderson, De Boinville and Constitution Hill can expect if he retains his unbeaten record next month after his latest success at short odds in January. Market Rasen: 1.50 Wallquatari 2.20 Bluey 2.50 Groom De Cotte 3.20 Miss Cynthia 3.52 Geordie Night 4.27 Onesoc 5.02 Forward Thinking. Taunton: 2.05 Ask Me Another 2.35 Zaochen Enki 3.05 Catch On Me 3.35 Camulus 4.10 Aurigny Mill 4.45 Shearer. Wolverhampton: 4.20 Enola Holmes 4.55 Sarafina Mshairi 5.30 Kaleidoscope Eyes 6.00 Addosh 6.30 Daaris 7.00 Sweet Fantastic (nap) 7.30 Coconut Bay 8.00 Mariner 8.30 High Court Judge (nb). 'The last time I saw that sort of crowd [for a Cheltenham winner] was in Sprinter Sacre's day,' Henderson said. 'It's a very special thing. People do love these horses and it shows that a 'boring' five-horse race with a 1-12 shot, to some people it's a tragedy but for most people it was something fantastic. 'It means a lot to us that people love him. We just look after him, we're the curator of something that is a bit special and so's the other fella [Jonbon], and it's just great that people do like them.'
