THE impressive performance of Warren Ewing’s former charge Constitution Hill in winning the Unibet Tolworth Novices’ Hurdle at Sandown last Saturday had commentators drawing on superlatives while the interviews with his owner, Michael Buckley, were informative and entertaining.

The Nicky Henderson-trained five-year-old faced just five other rivals over the two-mile trip on heavy ground and saw them off comprehensively as his odds of 2/5 had suggested. This was a second win from two starts over hurdles for the British-bred gelding whose previous victory had come under the same jockey, Nico de Boinville, and over the same course and distance, but on good-to-soft going, in early December.