This article is taken from the November 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

---

What is the point of summer? Cricket, I grant you. But other than that it’s essentially just months without football and jump racing. Life comes alive again in October when the football season has started to take shape and you can start properly anticipating the return of proper National Hunt racing.

It’s a wonderful thought that there are now only four months until Cheltenham. Critics argue it deforms the whole season, because even Grade 1 races such as the King George on Boxing Day are viewed in the context of what race the winner will run in at the festival. I’ve always thought that a bizarre criticism, like saying that athletics is deformed by having the Olympics. It’s a trite cliché that the Cheltenham Festival is racing’s Olympics, but the point of clichés is that they’re true.

For all that, there’s no escaping the fact that a series of chickens came home to roost this year. Trends that have been clear for some years became a real problem. It’s all well and good marvelling at Willie Mullins’ astonishing 103 festival winners and the brilliance of his horses like Ballyburn and Gaelic Warrior, but odds-on favourites at Cheltenham should be a once in a blue moon exception rather than increasingly the norm. And no festival race should be struggling for runners.

Jump racing has enough severe problems without adding the decline of the festival to the list, so it was entirely right that the Jockey Club has acted. The National Hunt Chase and Cross Country Chase will now be handicaps — as, most strikingly, will the Turners Novices’ Chase. The idea is that with one less Grade 1 to aim at, the likes of Willie Mullins will have to run more of their better horses against each other, increasing races’ competitiveness. I don’t think the changes go far enough, but they are a decent start.

Talking of decent starts, last year’s jockey championship looked a shoo-in for Sean Bowen, who was 47 winners ahead of Harry Cobden when he had a terrible fall on Boxing Day and missed all of January. Cobden, backed by the powerhouse Paul Nicholls stable, made up the deficit and is now champion.

The real anticipation is the return of Constitution Hill from suspected colic

This season the boot is on the other foot, and Cobden was out for weeks, leaving Bowen and former champion Harry Skelton to make hay. As I write, they are tied on 52 winners each. But the real anticipation is the return of Constitution Hill from a respiratory infection and suspected colic. His trainer, Nicky Henderson, is bullish. After his horse Luccia was beaten three-and-a-half lengths by State Man in the Champion Hurdle, Henderson concluded Constitution Hill “would’ve been back in his box having dinner by the time they finished because he’s that far ahead of her”.

He is due back in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle on the last day of November. At the moment he is 7/4 for the Champion Hurdle. I imagine that will look like the greatest gift the bookies have ever given punters after the Fighting Fifth is run.

Henderson has a host of the sort of problems we’d all love to have, such as what to do with his impressive unbeaten Aintree Grade 1 Hurdle winner Sir Gino. It would be pointless aiming him at the Champion Hurdle — not least because his owners, Joe and Marie Donnelly, also own this year’s winner, State Man — so I wonder if he will go novice chasing at some point this season.

There’s great excitement over the return of Il Est Francais, the French horse who blitzed the field with thrilling jumping in the big novice race at Kempton last Christmas. He is being prepared for this year’s King George, for which he is 7/2 favourite. It’s a mouthwatering prospect as Fastorslow, the only horse to repeatedly beat dual Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs, is also being targeted at the race. Happy days!