For all their bluster the Irish will have no more than 1% of their betting banks on State Man.
They aint stupid

Sea Pigeon, Night Nurse, Monksfield, Comedy of Errors, Lanzarote et al are proven established top class hurdlers who took each other. Testing their ratings. Everyone interested in horse racing consider these to be household names following their exploits on the racecourse.
Constitution Hill has a mountain to climb until he beats horses of this class and calibre.
The Timeform ratings are a complete joke when they try to calculate a top class racehorse running against much lesser horses. They have not the slightest idea nor do they understand 'class'.

Someone on the forum said Best Mate beat nowt in 3 Gold Cups. For me he was a better Gold Cup horse than Kauto Star and an even better jumper of fences. It's possible for the greatest hurdler of all time to be born/around when everything else is poor. That's a fact however you rate CH or any other horse.

Those hurdlers in the 70's used to beat each other.
Horseracing was more popular then aswell.Don't make
them better horses.

As a time merchant Howard are you not contradicting your own calculations? That horse in 73 still holds the course records for all the classic races. Odd statement or just trying and failing to make a point.

Penzance if you don't understand 'you are only better than what you beat', I will leave it at that.

As said previously,far too early to be talking about best ever,that said I have never seen a horse with so much potential then CH so early in a career.As Brigust says,trusting your own eyes is far more reliable than relying on the likes of Timeform,especially if you were around during the "Golden Era.His trainer managed 3 Champion Hurdles with See You When who was as fragile as glass.CH looks the opposite,robust,with NH handling him he could conceivably equal or better SYT or Istabraq.

Unfortunately for Acey (and eyewitnesses) I expect to see his bare arse in Tesco's window with MUG tattooed on his cheeks and Kemo Sabe with a billboard stating "The squirells knew"!!!

have no problem with constitution hill its just a price thing for me his odds are too short for me to be interested am on stateman at 12.5 and vauban at 18.5  on here  but not for a lot of dough .

If he gets to post he will be 1/4 imo. irrespective who turns up. but they arent machines(even tho he resmbles 1).

didnt stop Douvan going off @ 2/9 in Champion Chase a few years back with 10 runners  Hayden and that was 1/4 the odds!!

There's a few additional factors here. It's likely the Irish will be bullish (like the OP) and be piling on, and in theory the market doesn't know the limitation of State Man. The outcome of the earlier races will play a part, obviously if Mullins/the Irish are on a roll the market momentum is likely to be with SM. CH was surprisingly weak on the day last year as well.

@ 1/4 they aint going to go 7/2 or 4/1 2nd fav with 8 runners  more like 11/4 with Vauban in @ 6s. Just the usual rip off nowadays .
will be around 140%  @sp if 8 runners plus. The days of 1/4  fav and 7/2 4s 2nd fave have well and truly gone.

I always try to fins snippets on social media, no idea who it is but "@nationalhuntpro" a lad on there reckons Constitution Hill has a "dirty head carriage". Had a little look at replays maybe has a point but I'd say that's just the horse. Not something I heard elsewhere so worth throwing into the ring. I cannot for the life of me see how the horse gets beat barring accidents.

I can't have the 70s as the golden era, agree with Penzance, they used to beat each other. Istabraq would of been the only 4 time winner of the champion hurdle( won Irish hurdle in a canter and in form of his life) but for foot and mouth. His speed off that final bend would of destroyed all of those 70s horses. Then you've got Hatton's Grace and Sir Ken what IMHO would of beat those 70s horses too.

Good morning Guys,

My tuppence worth

Laurie (Brigust) and i are in agreement somewhat with BHA/Timeform ratings, they are certainly not the be all and end all, but on the other side of the coin, the only numerical system (not related to time) to determine if horse A is better than horse B.

Readers of my lay thread know i'm a massive fan of CH, i was at Sandown when he made his debut in a novice; i didn't back him then, but he made such a mental impression that i fully expected him to go straight into graded class for the Tolworth (it was a logical view and i stated here at the time). When i saw the sectionals i was convinced he was decent and backed him for that race (that actually wasn't a strong Grade 1 field bar him) and done so in his 3 subsequent runs. Last year i mentioned he will not be beaten over hurdles this season and could be shortest odds for the Champion Hurdle since Sir Ken (2/5) in 1953.

Until December last year, i can't recollect ever backing odds-on ante-post for a race since Frankel, but i'm on at 4/7 and 2/5 for the CH. Not the best betting strategy it has to be said, but in my opinion i'm actually betting on him turning up on March 14th. State Man is obviously useful and the race is increasingly looking like a match, but in a clean race i can't see CH losing. He switches off during a race, travels well, is a slick a hurdler as any in the past including Buveur d'Air (watch the final 2 flights at Newcastle) and has a turn of foot up there with the best. His winning distance total in 5 races is 77L. Mind you, i've been wrong before.

Comparing CH to Night Nurse et all at this stage is pointless, much of it based on opinion and even if he wins it's a bit too early for consideration as GOAT, but State Man is rated 167 by the IRB so imagine the media response if CH wins by 15L.

Good luck all.

Andrew I think Bull said about timefigures they show you how poor a horse  isn't not how good it is. But it looks like they already rate CH very highly. Don't agree with all their work ( especially what I believe are potential flaws in sectional time thinking  when rating fields of lightly raced horses ) but I do here.

Howard,

CH is clearly out of the ordinary (just as Frankel was) and i don't need ratings to tell me this, but like yourself and Timeform, i rate him very highly. Istabraq is the best hurdler this century and prior to that, Night Nurse over 2 decades earlier, but he has the potential at least to surpass these after only 5 races under rules.

It's not just the winning, but the manner in which he wins, as soon as Nico presses the button the race is over in several strides with Frankel-like acceleration. State Man is good, but i can't see him winning in March, in fact i think Vauban could finish close to him, ignore his 2 runs this season, he hasn't hurdled well and it hasn't gone right for him in either race.

Of course CH still has a bit to prove to match the media expectations, and we've seen 'bubbles' burst before on a racetrack, but i have a feeling this one is not for bursting.

Best leave me out of the 'ratings and speed figures discussion, but anyone who thinks we need ratings to tell us that CH looks like the best horse around by some way is misguided, if you asked me.

Another reason I find it difficult to reach any conclusion about CH being the GOAT is following the BHA's announcement about 'the continuation of British jump racing's demise'. That is not the back drop you want to hear and it is significant when Timeform etc do not, cannot, take these points into consideration. The GOAT should be racing at a time when the sport is on the up, strong, healthy and competitive not 'dying'.

We've got a discussion going on about whether CH is the greatest hurdler of all time whilst at the same time deliberating whether he will win this year's Champion Hurdle.

The point is this, if CH did not exist what we would be saying right now is that the 2 mile division is still in a very fallow period, perhaps even in a worse state than the Buveur D'air years and when Honeysuckle won her races, no-one would be hailing State Man as anything special.

Remember when the mighty Saint Roi won the County Hurdle off 4lbs lower than State Man did and he went into the following season as the buzz horse on everyone's lips for the that seasons Champion Hurdle,he was soon put in his place in open company being beat by Sharjah, Abacadabras and Honeysuckle when those horses were running at a much higher level to what two of them are now racing at and which State Man has just beaten.

CH may not be the greatest of all time, but he might be the 5th best.....where does an 8 length beating of Zanahiyr in a sprint put State Man in that list???