Constitution Hill problem could clear up in ‘three days or three weeks’

The cause of Constitution Hill’s lameness has been identified but his participation in the Christmas Hurdle on Boxing Day is now under threat.

Nicky Henderson explained on Friday that his star hurdler was lame and unlikely to take up his engagement in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle next Saturday, but at the time the reason was unknown.

Extensive tests have got to the root of the issue and found a pocket of bruising that is pressing on a nerve near his pastern, meaning the horse is free from skeletal or soft tissue injury and should bounced back to full health.

The time frame is the final question mark and will determine whether or not he takes up his entry in the Christmas Hurdle, which he has won for the last two years, or not.

“We’ve identified the issue that caused this rather mysterious lameness, there was literally nothing to see. He was lame, and there’s nothing – no heat, no filling, no soreness,” Henderson told Sky Sports Racing.

“You couldn’t explain it, so he spent most of yesterday in the clinic being X-rayed from head to foot. Well, there was no point X-raying from head to foot because it was one particular leg.

“(Nerve) blocks and X-rays failed to show anything, which we’ve got to take as a positive, because if you’d have found a chip in his knee that might have needed removing – those parts of the mechanism are dangerous – and if you get injuries in there you’ve got a pretty big problem.

“There was nothing to see there, an ultrasound scan revealed very little more and an MRI scan last night has found that there is a pocket of bruising, if you like, but it’s touching the nerve in the pastern.

“The pastern is not affected, there’s no injury as such. It’s touching a nerve, whether it’s in your tooth or your foot, if you start touching nerves they’re pretty sore.”

He went on: “Dave Mathieson, who is our vet and who has been minding the case for two days now, he says he hasn’t seen anything like this in all his 40 years of practice.

“This horse can do different things to anybody else, like he does on the race course!

“The obvious question is how long? And Dave’s opinion was, he gave me the long and short, the minimum could be three days and the maximum could be three weeks.

“If it’s three days we’ll get to Kempton, if it’s three weeks we wouldn’t get to Kempton – that’s as near to black and white as you can get.

“If it’s three days, we can live with that. He had a good gallop last week and we can train him in 10 days time. That would be great.

“There is no permanent damage. He’s never, ever taken a lame step in his life.”

Constitution Hill’s absence for the Fighting Fifth could leave the door open for stablemate Sir Gino, who is now set to do a piece of work with the race in mind.

“I think we’ll do a bit of work with him tomorrow, we’ll see what the weather’s like,” Henderson said of the horse.

“If it’s not absolutely foul, which it could be, then I’d probably try and work him tomorrow or Monday and see where we go from there with a definite view that we would, if all goes well, go to Newcastle.”