THE crowds turned out in force to Southwell on Friday night and Constitution Hill did not disappoint. It was an evening to remember for connections of the hurdling galactico, and you couldn't but be delighted to see them enjoy an outing like this after a most difficult couple of seasons.

In the cold light of day, the question has to be asked, though: what did we really learn at Southwell about Constitution Hill's suitability for the jumping demands of a Champion Hurdle? If anything, this dazzling flat performance has only created an even more difficult question for connections to answer about where he goes next.

Everyone knows a record of three falls in his last four starts over hurdles is the big problem for Nicky Henderson’s once bombproof nine-year-old. It has never been a question of his engine. His ability to jump at speed has deserted him at times, so going a mile and a half on the flat around an all-weather track did not give us any indication as to whether he’s over his greatest issue.

We all want to see the best two-miler hurdler in training to return to his imperious best and produce a clear round at the highest level; especially after a long road travelled for everyone involved, and with the obvious scrutiny that would follow if he endured another tumble at Cheltenham.

That said, seeing a boosted £40,000 pot rescheduled for the purpose of Constitution Hill turning up at Southwell for a prep race this week looks like a massive touch pulled off by Henderson. If other years are anything to go by, he would have brought Michael Buckley’s ace for an all-weather gallop somewhere around this time anyway.

Instead of likely paying a track for the use of their facilities for a racecourse gallop, he got to do something very similar and won a first prize of £21,600. For argument’s sake, there’s only £18,265 in the difference between what Constitution Hill collected when winning the Grade 1 Tolworth as a novice and what was on offer at Southwell for the winner.

All-weather history

There is already some history here when it comes to Constitution Hill strutting his stuff in artificial surface workouts.

It is almost a year to the day since Henderson brought the dual Cheltenham Festival winner to Kempton for what the legendary trainer described as a piece of work that was “frightening to watch”. It was a world away from the lifeless Kempton all-weather workout of a year earlier that effectively spelled the beginning of the end for his Cheltenham hopes that season.

“There’s no point in those others even trying to remotely go with him, we know that,” Henderson told reporters after his polytrack pipe-opener last year.

“It’s not as if he’s had to kick him, that’s just pure, raw, natural pace. That’s why I say it’s frightening because one moment he’s sat beside you and the next, he’s gone.”

Nico de Boinville was equally bullish after the gallop, declaring that it didn’t matter to him whether Brighterdaysahead or Lossiemouth - or both - turned up in the Champion Hurdle against him.

There was clear confidence in the camp after what he showed on the flat at Kempton, but we unfortunately know how his Champion Hurdle appearance went the following month, coming down at the fourth last. It’s not as though Kempton was an indicator of how he’d fare at Cheltenham. Southwell can't be either. It sheds no light on how he jumps under the white-hot heat of two miles at Prestbury Park on March 10th.

You might argue that by going to Southwell, connections got an idea of his wellbeing pre-Cheltenham, but that was determined just fine before other big targets - without a £40,000 pot being put on the table.

Hurdle option

If connections wanted to give him a sighter over hurdles in public beforehand, they could easily have done so last weekend. Many would have viewed Wincanton’s four-runner Kingwell Hurdle (won by a horse rated 22lb inferior to him) as a low-key Grade 2 for him to jump eight flights on heavy ground. Instead, we are where we are.

You can be guaranteed viewership for Friday night’s meeting was considerably higher than for any other at Southwell this winter. And it was exciting to watch. However, none of us who tuned in learned anything new about the biggest question hanging over Constitution Hill.

It's probably fair to say that these connections have traditionally erred on the side of caution when it comes to campaigning their great talent down the years. For example, in the aftermath of his sublime, track-record-shattering Supreme Novices' Hurdle triumph, race sponsors Paddy Power offered a £100,000 bonus if a British-trained horse beat Honeysuckle in the 2022 Punchestown Festival Champion Hurdle. Buckley and Henderson didn't take up the invitation.

When he has a whole career ahead of him on the flat, where he can chase valuable pots around the world and draw a passionate fan club to the races, it would be a big call to send him back over flights again in the most competitive two-mile event of the season where he's trying to avoid a record of four falls in five starts.

Taking a possible risk like that wouldn't typically be in their wheelhouse, but these are obviously exceptional circumstances. The next chapter in Constitution Hill's career might be his most fascinating yet - and that tells you just how special a talent he is at the age of nine.

IF you tuned in to television coverage of the Limerick Christmas Festival, it sounded like there was another bumper crowd in town for this season’s four-day meeting. Reports from those on the ground were that the turnout was strong too.

What a shame it is then, that the track has refused to provide figures to the press on how many people attended their marquee festival.

It was a good news story for racing when strong attendances were reported across tracks in Britain and Ireland over Christmas, and The Irish Field did its part to promote that. Leopardstown’s four-day figures rose by 7% (from 2024) to 67,202 and Down Royal told us that their attendance was a strong 6,914 on December 26th. Why then couldn’t Limerick share their numbers?

We made contact with all the major tracks after Christmas to write about how their festive meetings had gone and each of them provided information, except for Limerick. I made an attempt of my own via email a few weeks later on January 26th, when the track’s CEO Michael Lynch did reply, though he did not share any attendance figures.

“We have a policy of only sharing our attendances with official channels such as HRI,” said Lynch. When I followed up asking to explain the background to that policy for the benefit of our readers, no reply was forthcoming. Perhaps the policy is a decision made at board level, but we are left in the dark.

Nobody is suggesting we should be fixated on attendance figures. Prioritising the raceday experience has always been of greater importance, in my book. As well as that, some in the industry have held private reservations that attendance figures for certain tracks have been exaggerated down the years. Crowd numbers remain a noteworthy statistic, though, and other tracks seemingly have no issue sharing them.

Crowd reporting

This is not the first time that Christmas crowd reporting has been written about at Limerick - a track, which after a tumultuous period, was appointing its fourth manager in a little more than two years when Lynch joined in April 2024.

After the 2022 Christmas Festival, then manager Tom Rudd told the Racing Post he was pleased with an attendance of roughly 17,500 for the track’s four-day meeting.

Previous management had stated there were 40,941 in attendance for the 2019 Limerick Christmas Festival (the nearest comparable year to 2022 due to the pandemic), 40,426 in 2018 and 40,072 in 2017. That is obviously a massive difference to the 2022 numbers.

However, in the following week’s The Irish Field, the racecourse moved to clarify that Rudd’s 2022 figures “didn’t include hospitality and industry people”.

The track then posted these revised 2022 figures:

Those changes brought the four-day total attendance to 36,474 - miles ahead of what their own manager at the time reported at first. It was a highly unusual turn of events to say the least.

Horse Racing Ireland publishes figures for all tracks in its annual Factbook, and Limerick’s official crowds in the years since that revision have been interesting to note.

According to HRI, a combined total of 93,039 attended Limerick’s 18 meetings in 2022. Across the same number of meetings at the track in 2023, HRI’s Factbook says there was a 64% drop in crowds to 33,926 for the whole year.

It’s hard to fathom that crowds could drop by 59,113 over the course of a year without it becoming a glaring focal point for the industry - especially while Christmas has continued to feel like a success for Limerick in recent years.

Of the combined 33,926 for 2023, a reported 10,065 came from the track’s student raceday (leaving 23,861 across the remaining 17 fixtures in 2023). Remember, Limerick said they had a revised figure of 36,474 for the four days of Christmas alone in 2022.

There was a similar total-year figure for 2024 published in the HRI Factbook (37,712).

The whole thing makes for unusual reading, and one is left to ponder whether there has been a shift in how attendance figures are reported there. When their current policy restricts the press from being told crowd numbers, we’re left to wonder what the figures are like now.

Regardless, it doesn’t seem fair to other tracks that they are expected to tell us about their ups and downs on crowds at big meetings, yet Limerick don’t engage with the press on their numbers. It should be the same for everyone.