What price is Constitution Hill for the 2025 Champion Hurdle?

For the uninitiated, Constitution Hill is a now seven-year-old gelding owned by entrepreneur Michael Buckley and trained by his long-time ally Nicky Henderson at Seven Barrows in Lambourn, near Hungerford, Berkshire. Having been narrowly beaten in his sole point-to-point outing at Tipperary in April 2021, the son of Blue Bresil made a winning debut under Rules in a novices’ hurdle at Sandown Park the following December and has yet to be serious challenged in seven subsequent starts, all at Grade 1 level. Indeed, Constitution Hill is already the joint-sixth highest-rated hurdler of the Timeform era, just 5lb inferior to Night Nurse, according to the respected ratings provider.

In 2022/23, Constitution Hill won the so-called Triple Crown of Hurdling – that is, the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle, the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton Park and the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham – with consummate ease, by an aggregrate of 38 lengths. He rounded off that campaign by making all to win the Aintree Hurdle, unchallenged, and on his reappearance at Kempton on Boxing Day, 257 days later, made short work of the opposition in the Christmas Hurdle for the second year running.

Everything looked set fair for a successful defence of his Champion Hurdle crown at the Cheltenham Festival, but Constitution Hill was laid low with a respiratory infection and suspect colic, which caused him to miss the remainder of the 2023/24 campaign.However, Henderson recently confirmed that his stable star had undergone wind surgery ahead of his proposed return to action in the aforementioned Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on November 30, 2024 and that “everything is 100 per cent”. Conseqently the subject of a “large” betting shop bet, according to the “Racing Post”, has shortened slightly to top-priced 7/4 favourite for the 2025 Champion Hurdle.