The best laid two-year plan that had Lossiemouth lining up in Tuesday’s Unibet Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham went awry at the last minute with Willie Mullins opting instead to run her in the preceding Mares' contest 40 minutes earlier.
Lossiemouth, a Triumph winner in 2023, and after which Mullins indicated his long-term strategy towards the 2025 championship, is now odds-on to successfully defend the Close Bros Mares' Hurdle title she won a year ago.
It comes on the back of Lossiemouth’s dramatic fall at the Dublin Racing Festival last month and the record-breaking trainer has opted to again take a cautious festival route with the Rich Ricci-owned mare.
It means a dilution of the Champion Hurdle, which had been billed as a mouthwatering clash between Lossiemouth, the English superstar Constitution Hill, Gordon Elliott’s top mare Brighterdaysahead, and Mullins’s reigning Champion Hurdle winner State Man.
Cheltenham: Lossiemouth switched from Champion Hurdle to defend her Mares' Hurdle crown instead
JP McManus: From fearless young punter to Cheltenham’s most successful racehorse owner
Malachy Clerkin: Cheltenham’s thrill is gone as the best stories are replaced by the betting, the betting, the betting
Will Willie Mullins, with nothing left to prove, bow out after Cheltenham? Don’t bet on it
The other trio are part of a final field of seven for the opening day festival feature after Sunday’s final declarations.
Sunday’s late change of plan drew comparisons with 2016 when the Mullins-trained Vautour, also owned by Rich Ricci, was switched on final 48-hour declarations from his intended date in the Gold Cup to the Ryanair Chase, which he won in spectacular style.
“I think he’s a Gold Cup horse,” Mullins said at the time. “[But] he wasn’t working like a Gold Cup horse.”
The proof of the pudding about Lossiemouth’s state of festival readiness will come on Tuesday where she faces 10 opponents. Her stable companion Jade De Grugy is rated her most likely threat by bookmakers. Henry de Bromhead’s July Flower is also prominent in betting.
Although entered in both races, Lossiemouth’s switch invariably generated plenty of online comment and once again brought to the fore broader questions as to how to square multiple entries for horses within a circle of how best to promote the sport.
It comes on the back of the weekend admission by Cheltenham’s chief executive that attendances will be down again at this week’s festival.
CEO Guy Lavender said the Jockey Club-owned track is expecting a drop from last year’s overall crowd figure of just short of 230,000. He is expecting “more than 200,000″ over the four days.
That 2024 figure confirmed a sharp trend from the first post-Covid pandemic in 2022 which attracted a record tally of over 280,000 people through the gates.
Various external factors such as the cost-of-living crisis have been put forward as reasons for the sharp slip, as well as more internal issues such as ticket prices. However, competition factors have also been pointed to as contributions to the decline.
“I think that it’s important to mention up front that we are expecting fewer racegoers to be joining us in person this week than in recent years,” Lavender said. “The decline is not catastrophic but nor are we seeing growing attendances. I am sure that this will result in some commentary, both in the media and on social media platforms.”
Separately, he added: “If you look at the changes that have been implemented since last year, there’s some quite significant ones. The racing programme is moving in the right direction of creating more competitive racing and bringing the best horses up against each other.”
Lossiemouth’s switch throws open the possibility of all four Grade One races on Tuesday featuring odds-on favourites in a potentially expensive scenario for bookmakers.
As well as Constitution Hill and Lossiemouth, the Mullins pair Kopek Des Bordes (Supreme Novices' Hurdle) and Majborough (Arkle) are also short-priced favourites likely to tempt many accumulator punters.
It is a decade since a similar accumulator on four Mullins trained ‘shorties’ came down at the final flight of the Mares' Hurdle when Annie Power fell. On the back of victories for Douvan, Un De Sceaux and Faugheen in the Champion, the spill saved bookies a reputed £50 million.
It also emerged on Sunday that Kopek Des Bordes will sport a first -time hood in Tuesday’s opener, for which the Mullins team will have half of the 12-strong field. The Supreme is named in memory of the late Michael O’Sullivan.
The all-dominant trainer has made 16 declarations in all for day one as he tries to get off to a flier in his attempt to be crowned leading trainer at the festival for a 12th time.
Paul Townend is hot favourite to once again be crowned leading rider at the festival and enjoyed a winning warm-up at Naas on Sunday when his sole ride of the weekend, Redemption Day, landed the odds in a maiden hurdle. Townend’s next spin will be on board Kopek Des Bordes.
“He has the engine, but things probably haven’t gone right for him for a couple of seasons. Hopefully he can now have a nice spring,” Townend said of Redemption Day.
Maximum fields have been declared for the three handicaps on Tuesday’s card, the Ultima Handicap Chase, the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle and the National Hunt Novices’ Handicap Chase.
In a change to previous years, the National Hunt Chase will be run as a handicap and is not restricted to amateur jockeys. Patrick Mullins is among the leading amateurs still set to ride and will team up with cross-channel hope, Transmission.
Ground conditions at Cheltenham ahead of Tuesday’s kick-off to the biggest week of the year in National Hunt racing is officially good to soft. With a dry weather outlook, watering continues.
