Constitution Hill is being prepared for the Group Two Gran Premio del Jockey Club at San Siro in Milan on Sunday 25 October, with Nicky Henderson confirming the Italian race as the next target for his former Champion Hurdle winner.
The mile-and-a-half contest, worth €506,000 and won last year by the Andrew Balding-trained Eydon, would be the nine-year-old’s first overseas appearance since switching to the Flat at the start of the year.
Speaking to the Racing Post, Henderson said: “We’re thinking about going to Milan with him. We weren’t going to run him at Ascot this weekend because of the ground, and we think we might get his ground out there for him.
“It’s where Michael [Buckley, owner] and I would like to go. We’ve always said we’d like to travel and that he’d take us to places we might never go. I’ve always said it would be fun and it’s a far better idea than Australia.”
The decision rules out the St Simon Stakes at Newbury, staged on the same weekend. Henderson said: “It’s a Group Two, and with that amount of prize-money on offer, it’s not going to be missed by many. The St Simon Stakes at Newbury is on the same weekend, but Milan is the one we’re going for.”
Constitution Hill had also held an entry for the Melbourne Cup, while the Gulf of Bahrain Cup on 13 November had been raised as a possibility earlier this month.
The trip brings down the curtain on a fortnight of deliberation after his unbeaten Flat record went in the September Stakes at Kempton on 5 September, where he finished fourth behind Pride Of Arras. That first defeat followed all-weather wins at Southwell in February and Kempton in March, and his official Flat rating subsequently rose to 108.
Quick ground then took the Cumberland Lodge Stakes at Ascot off the table, with Henderson declining to make an entry on Monday. All three of his Flat starts so far have come on artificial surfaces, and the San Siro assignment would also answer the outstanding question of how his form translates to turf.
Henderson was keen to stress that Milan does not signal the beginning of the end for the 2023 Champion Hurdle winner, who has attracted a new following since changing codes.
He said: “This doesn’t mean it’s going to be his last race. We have every intention of being back for all sorts of fun things next year – and we’ll be back in the spring, but this needn’t be his last race of this campaign, either.
“He’s well in himself. This weekend was always likely to get thwarted by the weather, so I hadn’t put him in. I looked at the entries as they were coming in on Monday, and they were all rated quite high, so we’re still very badly in. I’m sure we’ll be badly in wherever we go next, but this is our decision.”
Entries and final declarations for the San Siro meeting are still to come, so the Milan plan remains a stated target rather than a confirmed runner at this stage.