Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle (G1)
"Sir Gino"
Keen, pulling early, slightly high head carriage, fresh … .All of those words could be used to describe the opening half a mile of the Christmas Hurdle run by the unbeaten Sir Gino and yet he still won with his head in his chest. This is a horse of a lifetime for Nicky Henderson and the Donnelly’s and despite the injury he suffered last season and all of the concerns that must have raised, his return at Kempton confirmed that all of the ability and promise that he had shown at this time last year remains intact. A winning time of 3:41.29 points to the fact that the ground at Kempton is Good and that obviously helps when we compare this winning time to that of the most recent renewals. Sir Gino was 4.31s faster than his stablemate Constitution Hill had been 12-months earlier and he in fact ran the fastest winning time in this race in the last 20 years. His rivals simply couldn’t live with him. Celtic Dino is not a slow horse. The time figures that he put together when winning the Welsh Champion Hurdle earlier in the season were very good, clocking a top speed of 36 mph as he closed with a pair of sub 14s furlongs, but he was in trouble with 6 furlongs to run at Kempton and never looked likely to get himself on terms..
Whilst we can all debate the merits of Golden Ace’s CV, she has had an incredible year in 2025 and lost very little in defeat here. Having had to work hard to keep herself on terms with Sir Gino, she made a couple of slight errors over the hurdles in the back straight, probably as a result of the pace that she was being asked to go. To her immense credit, she kept battling in the straight and lost less than a second to Sir Gino over furlongs 13 and 14 as they turned for home. However, despite being keen and quite possibly needing this first run, Sir Gino was able to pull clear with ease to win by 6 lengths. His late speed figures are phenomenal. A late speed figure of 32.47 mph was a clear best in this field (next best Celtic Dino 31.19 mph) but he appeared to have a lot more left in the tank, a fact borne out by his run-out speed of 33.13 mph which was 2.26 mph quicker than the runner-up.
As the above pace chart shows, the pace held up reasonably well and this wasn’t a case of Sir Gino sprinting away from his rivals. Instead, it shows a horse that towed the rest of the field along and one by one their chances faded as they ran out of the energy needed to go with him. It would be easy to overreact to this. The Champion hurdle division has been crying out for a horse to step forwards and after the disappointments of Constitution Hill and The New Lion at Newcastle and losing State Man to injury for this season, a performance like this from Sir Gino was always likely to propel him to the head of the Champion Hurdle market. Lossiemouth is likely to make her own case at Leopardstown later in the week (if this is indeed the race that she is aimed at), but it is probably going to take an incredible performance in Ireland to knock Sir Gino off the favourites rostrum at this point.
There are several notes of caution that are needed here. Firstly, I am a believer in the bounce factor and after what happened in the Spring, Sir Gino staying sound is always an important factor to consider when we remember that he is yet to make it to the festival. Secondly, this is Kempton. A right-handed Flat track that favours speed, especially when the ground is on the quicker side and Sir Gino clearly relishes that given that he is 3 from 3 at the London track. The undulations of Cheltenham in March will be a very different test. However, Sir Gino has produced a Champion hurdle performance. He beat the reigning Champion hurdler with ease and ran a very fast time in the process. Despite everything that he did wrong in the early stages, he’s beaten this field with speed and a relentless gallop. It’s important to point out that with the possible exception of Golden Ace, none of the other runners were ever likely to be considered as serious Champion hurdle performers, but they are all decent 2-mile horses and they simply couldn’t live with him. Whether his connections will choose to employ the same tactics next time is open to question, but with so much speed in his legs, it’s highly likely that Sir Gino will get plenty of horses out of their comfort zones and it will take a serious performance to break his unbeaten record over 2 miles. Of course all of this assumes that he stays over hurdles. He was so impressive when winning over fences at this meeting 12-months ago that there is nothing to suggest that he couldn’t also win a Champion Chase, even with such limited experience over the larger obstacles. Whichever way he goes, the data from Kempton would suggest that Sir Gino is one of the fastest National Hunt horses in training and it will take a very fast horse to go past him in March.