See You Then – Triple Champion Hurdle winner 1985 – 1987

One sad piece of news for racing fans over the Christmas period was the death of See You Then who won three consecutive Champion Hurdles for Nicky Henderson in the mid-eighties. He died in Italy at the age of 31 after a long and well-deserved retirement.

See You Then first appeared at Cheltenham when trained in Ireland for the Triumph Hurdle but was beaten by Northern Game in 1984. The following season he returned under the care of Nicky Henderson and provided the Lambourn trainer with his first Cheltenham Festival winner. For all his brilliance, the horse had fragile forelegs and it was to take all of Henderson’s skill to get the horse to Cheltenham fit to produce his best for three consecutive Champion hurdles.

It became part of the traditional build up to Cheltenham to wait for news of See You Then as Henderson plotted one or two comeback races for the horse in time for the festival. He formed a tremendous association with jockey Steve Smith-Eccles who managed to produce the horse at the perfect moment to sweep past his rivals up the Cheltenham hill. Eventually the struggles with fitness took their toll and See You Then broke down in his prep race for an attempt at a fourth champion hurdle in 1988 and he was eventually retired after the race in 1990.

His run of victories put him alongside other Cheltenham legends who managed to record three victories in the Champion Hurdle: Hattons Grace (1949, 1950 and 1951), Sir Ken (1952, 1953 and 1954), Persian War (1968, 1969 and 1970) and Istabraq (1998, 1999 and 2000). No horse has achieved four victories in the race although Persian War finished second in 1971 and Istabraq was favourite in 2001 before the meeting had to be abandoned after the outbreak of foot and mouth disease.

Henderson still regards See You Then as one of, if not the best of all his Cheltenham winners. He has gone on to win every major race at the Cheltenham festival, capped by Long Run’s Gold Cup success in 2011. He subsequently won the Champion Hurdle with Punjabi (2009) and Binocular (2010) and will be taking possibly his strongest ever contingent to Cheltenham next March. He currently has three horses in the first five in the ante-post market for the Champion Hurdle in Binocular, Grandouet and Spirit Son as well as the option of running last year’s third Oscar Whiskey. Whatever trials and tribulations he may experience with these horses, none will provide him with so much heartache or so much reward as the great See You Then.