Lydia Hislop's Road To Cheltenham: Lossiemouth - will she or won't she?

How will you react if Lossiemouth runs in the Unibet Champion Hurdle? I mean after running around the room cheering, pausing only to open the window to yell: “At last! Victory for sport!” I mean after the euphoria dies down. When you start to analyse what it might mean.

Ostensibly, it’s a vote of confidence in her ability to win Jump racing’s most prestigious hurdles event – or, at least, in her ability to win what passes for that accolade in the absence of Sir Gino, Constitution Hill and State Man. Surely it says the Closutton Order, having retreated to the privacy of its cloisters and meditated, now believes she can beat The New Lion, Brighterdaysahead and Golden Ace?

For her running in the Champion Hurdle is what today’s moves in two interconnected Festival ante-post markets suggest. Now, of course, things can change – this is Willie Mullins, after all – but the reaction appears substantial enough to suggest they are based on something more solid than a run of “clueless windbags” [© x.com, natch] saying that’s what will happen.

The latest act in this play we all thought we’d seen before opened on Tuesday night at the News Building in London Bridge, where The Sun held its annual Cheltenham Festival preview show. Hosted by Matt Chapman, it featured as its traditional star turn on the panel a certain Rich Ricci.

At this equivalent night in 2016 he told assembled fans that Vautour would either run in the Gold Cup or stay at home, just days before Mullins infamously switched to the Ryanair and the horse romped it by six lengths. Cue opprobrium. Last year, Ricci broke the news nobody wanted to hear: Lossiemouth would bypass the Champion Hurdle to defend her Mares’ crown.

This year, he was not unequivocal. Stressing he held no strong preference for either target during the panel’s Champion Hurdle discussions, Ricci revealed headgear had been mentioned by the Closutton team. This, we inferred, meant if – not when – she turned up on Cheltenham’s first day, she would be wearing first-time cheekpieces. The night’s sponsors, the Tote, offered those present 4-1 NRNB.

My first reaction was: this makes some sense. Paul Townend had testified she was at full revs, her ears flat back, when taken out of her comfort zone from the outset by Burdett Road setting a strong pace at a sharp track for last season’s Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, ultimately won by Constitution Hill. On Road To Cheltenham – this series as in the last – Ruby Walsh maintained her best trip is two-and-a-half miles.

Thus, applying some focussing cheekpieces to a thoroughly genuine horse – a mare who “always turns up”, as her rider has said – might enable her to travel more readily in the early stages of a Champion Hurdle on the ever-turning, comparatively sharp Old Course. Perhaps it also suggests she’ll be ridden more positively than usual, also to utilise the asset of her stamina?

This would also have the useful knock-on impact of placing The New Lion’s hurdling under pressure and perhaps messing with Brighterdaysahead’s mojo. (On the latter mare, I can’t help but feel her stabling at Olly Murphy’s yard rather than at the racecourse is one excuse too many for last season’s flop in this race. I thought blame had been laid at the door of that chip in her knee?)

You can be sure if Closutton mentioned headgear to Ricci – which can only mean cheekpieces in this scenario – that Lossiemouth has been worked in them at home. It’s also fair to observe they’ve become the fashion accessory du jour for Mullins since transformative responses from Majborough and Kaid D’Authie at the Dublin Racing Festival.

Most recently today, every whiff of 11-4 has disappeared about Lossiemouth for the Champion market and Wodhooh is now odds-on for the Mares’ Hurdle, in which all principals aside from those with known alternative targets (and Lossiemouth) have been shortened, too. If these moves are accurate, expect stablemate Jade De Grugy to swap fences for hurdles in the Festival’s mares’ events.

If you are one of a select group clutching a NRNB voucher at 4-1 Lossiemouth, it’s possible you still have a very good bet. Yet during the course of that Tuesday night at the Farage Fan Club and at last night’s London Racing Club event – if you live in the capital, it’s a fan’s refuge I can strongly recommend – it began to percolate that we’re talking about a mare who ran utterly flat in the Irish Champion Hurdle.

Admittedly that was on ground that had been unraceable the day before and she held her head at an awkward angle, displaying some form of discomfort, so perhaps for her this was an untenable step beyond the heavy ground on which she won the Triumph? Equally, that was still a hard race in attritional ground little more than four weeks ago – an observation that, of course, applies to Brighterdaysahead, too.

Yet what if the cheekpieces truly signify Lossiemouth hasn’t regained her form at home? What if they’re the headgear equivalent of the panic button?

As Ruby tells us all the time, Team Mullins run their horses in the races in which they have the best chance of winning. What if she isn’t really fancied to win either race, so they may as well roll the dice with an aid in the Champion Hurdle?

Of course, there is a third option – the one the public don’t believe. That Mullins hasn’t really sat down to think about it yet. It’s long time until Sunday.

*Easier to read, perhaps, is the likelihood of a last-minute switch for Romeo Coolio. He retains options in the Arkle, Brown Advisory and Ryanair but has drifted for the first race to the degree that suggests Gordon Elliott has gone cold on taking on Kopek Des Bordes, Lulamba and Kargese – especially on drying ground.

Would you fancy taking on the hardened titleholder and brilliant Irish Gold Cup winner Fact To File, with that destination having the potential to attract some last-minute travellers like Banbridge or Jonbon? Or stepping up to 3m1f off the back of a draining duel in the Irish Arkle?

Romeo Coolio will surely stay that trip in time, and it looks like the lesser race of his novice options, I’m sure, but I don’t like how his prep has turned out. I still prefer the WillowWarm Gold Cup at Fairyhouse, she shouted into the wind.