Just four opponents take on British jump racing’s great white hope Constitution Hill at Newcastle on Saturday, although it is the lack of numbers in Newbury’s feature about an hour later that’s more notable.
Even now still widely referred to as the Hennessy, the Coral Gold Cup is one of the most prestigious cross-channel handicap prizes of the season.
It’s not unknown for it to not fill up with runners. Just a dozen ran when Sizing Tennessee won it in 2018. But otherwise, the 16-strong field this time is the smallest in a decade.
The significance of that is the context of deep disquiet within British racing about field sizes generally, a consequent impact on competition, and all of it in a wider backdrop of continuing Irish dominance.
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This race isn’t usually a priority for Irish raiders. Total Recall in 2017 is the sole winner in over four decades. So given a hugely lucrative £250,000 pot is available, such a turnout is hardly going to help assuage concerns.
Should the sole Irish hope emerge on top just after 3pm on Saturday concerns are only likely to deepen further.
No five-year-old has ever won the race in any of its sponsorship guises but Joseph O’Brien’s Busselton is hardly a callow customer up against grizzled veterans.
With a dozen starts over fences already under his belt, the French bred is plenty experienced enough for such a task and has proven big handicap form already in the bag.
Hewick’s dramatic final-fence fall in September’s Kerry National might have helped but Busselton was able to take full advantage of that mishap by a horse now in the Cheltenham Gold Cup reckoning.
O’Brien’s cousin, JJ Slevin, again takes the reins on an admirably tough customer with proven versatility in terms of ground.
O’Brien also has a runner in Sunday’s big handicap prize at Navan.
A Wave Of The Sea is one of 19 lining up for the Bar One Troytown Chase, a bigger field than Newbury despite a less substantially less valuable €100,000 prize.
Ground conditions at Navan could dry out a bit over the weekend which would be no hindrance to A Wave Of The Sea.
He was a Grade One winner as a juvenile over hurdles but there are bright young prospects and then there is Constitution Hill.
The memory of his 22-length rout in Cheltenham’s Supreme last March ensures a glaring spotlight will be on Nicky Henderson’s prodigy when he lines up in the Betfair Fighting Fifth Hurdle at 2.10.
That defeat of his stable companion Jonbon had handicap abacuses whirring frantically to try and quantify it among the great novice performances of all time.
Timeform equalled it superior to the legendary and ill-fated Golden Cygnet’s Supreme performance 45 years earlier.
An official rating of 170 after just three career starts has Constitution Hill superior to many Champion Hurdle winners including no less than the current dual-title holder, Honeysuckle.
It is a massive achievement to reach so high so quickly and there remains the intriguing possibility that he can get significantly better again.
“The trouble is we don’t know what Constitution Hill is to be honest with you. It was a freakish performance on all three occasions last year,” Henderson said on Friday.
“The Tolworth was the first glimpse we had of what might be there and the Supreme was ridiculous that he could do that to Jonbon, who I thought was seriously top-class,” he added.
More than Henderson have been moved to describe Constitution Hill in ‘freakish’ terms and not just because of his immense natural talent.
There is also a temperament that gets painted in paragon terms since the horse is apparently laid back to the point of horizontal at any other time bar the business of racing.
This is just the sort of prospect to boost a beleaguered cross-channel sector consistently humbled by Irish success at Cheltenham in recent years.
It is also a scenario that has racing history littered with the debris of smashed reputations.
This will be Constitution Hill’s first spin in senior company and another of his stable companions, Epatante, is after all a Champion Hurdle winner herself.
She did that in 2020 off an official rating 11lbs inferior to what Constitution Hill is now already, and with a sex allowance thrown in.
However, the mare, who has had the thankless subsequent task of chasing Honeysuckle around, is an experienced high-quality operator who should give everyone an early-season indicator of her stablemate’s capabilities.
Beat her at his ease by a double-digit margin and then the hype machine around Constitution Hill will kick into real overdrive.
Further proof of the allure of an unbeaten record will spread to the other side of the world on Sunday morning where the Japan Cup takes place in Tokyo at 6.40 Irish-time.
Although there is no Irish runner in one of world racing’s great prizes, the French contender Onesto, runner-up to Luxembourg in September’s Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown, provides an interesting link.
He is one of a quartet of European contenders with the most fascinating perhaps being Germany’s Tunnes.
The half-brother to Arc hero Torquator Tasso has a perfect four from four career record that includes a devastating 10 length Group One victory in Munich earlier this month.
There has been no overseas winner of the Japan Cup since 2005 when Frankie Dettori and Alkaased were successful. A decade previously the German star Lando won it. Tunnes is a general 12-1 shot to bridge that gap.
