the mighty fall - it happens to every champion.

​There was, at least for me, a great sadness to the defeat of Honeysuckle in the Hatton’s Grace at Fairyhouse on Sunday as she not only lost a race she had won in the three previous seasons but she lost her chance to become the holder of the longest sequence of victories and taken the records of Big Bucks and Altior.
Yet, and this says a whole load about the competitiveness of racing in Ireland compared to Great Britain, this year’s renewal of the Hatton’s Grace was almost certainly stronger than the previous three and Honeysuckle might, just, have a run a better race first time out than in any of her victories in the race.
She is getting older and as any trainer will tell you, as racehorses age the more work it can take to get them to peak fitness. I doubt if she has ever been 100% straight for her first race of the season, with Henry de Bromhead’s horses always better for a run under their belts. And, apparently, the de Bromhead string are operating to only a 7% strike rate at present, which suggests he is yet to strike form. History tells us that when his horses start winning, they are a formidable force.
Unlike his main rivals in Ireland, Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins, de Bromhead is more akin to the trainers of another age who used the racecourse to put an edge on their horses, with a promising run thought more important than a first-time-out success. Where Henry de Bromhead is similar to Willie Mullins is that he tends to allow himself to be hostage to repetition, what worked last season and season before always being the preferred option. If this remains the policy for Honeysuckle, we will not see her again until the Dublin Racing Festival in February and her connections, and us, will have this season’s Hatton’s Grace hanging over our thoughts for the next two-months. Henry de Bromhead knows Honeysuckle far better than any of us, of course, but I would be inclined to get her out over the Christmas period, if only to confirm she remains capable of winning a third Champion Hurdle in March, and in case she now needs an extra race to ensure 100% fitness come her dust-up with Constitution Hill.

The best winner over the weekend, excepting Facile Vega (why do Irish jockeys allow the Mullins hotpots uncontested leads?) was Edwardstone in the Tingle Creek. There was something imperious in his victory, looking to be going the easiest as far out as the Railway fences and brushing aside the opposition with the verve of a potential champion. I thought, in winning the Arkle last season, he was the best of a poorish bunch of 2-mile novice chasers; I was wrong. On his Tingle Creek showing, there is no way I can see Energumene beating him in March at Cheltenham.
As for Shishkin? Although all last season I was of the opinion he wanted further than 2-miles, after all he outstayed Energumene to win at Ascot, I cannot believe his, for him, poor effort in the Tingle Creek was due to having lost all his speed and become a 3-mile chaser since last March. Though having no knowledge of the ‘bone condition’ that struck him down last season, I am swayed to think the repercussions of the condition was the main cause of his laboured performance and that, sadly, we may have seen the best of him and that it is the downward curve to retirement for him. But then we all said the same of Sprinter Sacre and we will never forget the miracle Nicky Henderson pulled off with him.

I will finish with an old chestnut of mine. A few years ago, I wrote to the clerk of the course at Sandown and suggested that a long distance staying (Championship) race was missing from the National Hunt programme and that such a race would make startling contrast to the Tingle Creek. I added that I thought a run-of-the-mill regional ‘National’ was no attraction for a Grade 1 racecourse, when a conditions chase for staying chasers would be. In reply, I was told Sandown had ‘plans’ for the London National.
National Hunt is founded on staying chases, with the season still highlighted by such races. What there isn’t though is a championship race for such horses.