Constitution Hill’s paragon status revolves almost as much around his temperament as his talent. Apart from running fast when necessary he is apparently content to do little else but eat and sleep. It isn’t behaviour he learned from Warren Ewing.
The man who moulded the superstar’s emerging talent has a daily schedule that’s exhausting just to listen to.
“Get up about five, feed all the horses, muck out the barn, and then go into work,” he recites. “Buy the fish, deal with problems, sell the fish, go home and then start riding out.”
If horses are Warren Ewing’s passion, fish is his business.
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Ewing’s Fish Merchants is a family business employing 35 staff that supplies hotels and restaurants all over the north of Ireland. Their own brand of organic smoked salmon is snapped up by Selfridges and Harrods. An original shop in Belfast city centre opened in 1911.
“It’s my great grandfather’s business. We’re one of the oldest shops in Belfast: myself and my brother do it together now. That’s the main job. Horses are my hobby,” Ewing says.
He is based in Templepatrick just outside Belfast, buying young horses to sell on by using the point-to-point fields to prepare them. There are rarely more than 15 in training at any one time. From such a comparatively small racing outpost has come a talent to excite fans like few others ever have.
Ewing teamed up with the former champion jockey Barry Geraghty to buy Constitution Hill as a foal for £16,500.
When the horse was four Ewing made the long journey south to Tipperary and saddled him for a point-to-point. In hindsight it’s remarkable he was beaten. But the trainer already knew he had something special on his hands.
“I knew he was going to be special. He was in a different class. I told everybody he was as good a horse as I ever sat on,” Ewing has said.
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Geraghty pointed the horse towards his old ally Nicky Henderson. With Ewing confidently predicting the young pupil was his academy’s finest ever graduate, owner Michael Buckley paid out £120,000 which as dreams go is pretty much peanuts.
If the rest is history, it is historic comparisons with greats of the game that are already being made for Constitution Hill. Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle is getting billed not so much as a contest as a coronation.
“They’re talking of him as the next Arkle and he’s pretty unbeatable at the minute now anyway,” Ewing considers. “He does have unlimited potential. He was always so easy from the very start. From when he started cantering he was just very good, everything was so easy to him, just a proper racehorse.”
Ewing’s son Sam is one of the rising stars in Ireland’s jockey ranks, a talent he inherited from his father who enjoyed a prominent amateur riding career of his own.
Family expertise was originally confined to fish, not horses, but ponies sparked an interest that eventually took Ewing all over Ireland point to pointing.
“Myself and Paddy Graffin (now an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board official) were probably the first northern boys to go down and do the point to point circuit in the south of Ireland,” he recalls.
“I stopped riding when I was 35 and I wanted to keep involved. My neighbour Wilson Dennison was big into the point-to-points, and I saw him doing well. So, I thought I’d have a go in a smaller way without putting a whole lot of money into it,” Ewing adds.
From relatively small numbers has come a consistent run of good horses. They include the £47,000 purchase Better Days Ahead who Ewing sold on for £350,000 after winning a point to point. He lines up in Wednesday’s Champion Bumper for Gordon Elliott.
Constitution Hill however looks a singular talent with limitless potential. Even before Tuesday’s race there is speculation about him emulating Dawn Run by eventually completing the Champion Hurdle – Gold Cup double.
If the hype machine has long since gone into overdrive about his former charge Ewing’s soft-voiced enthusiasm for the horse still speaks volumes.
He will take a break from daily routine to be at Cheltenham where his son will be riding as well as saddling his own runner, Brain Power, in Friday Hunters Chase.
Brain Power was another he sold to Henderson and Buckley who won the American Grand National with him. Now he’s back in Templepatrick and firing in victories on the point-to-point fields; still a good horse but no Constitution Hill.
“You’d be proud of them, it’s great to see them going on and succeeding for people who’ve spent their money on them and take the risks in running them,” Ewing points out.” They’re not all swans though – there’s plenty of ducks too!”
