After a stunning campaign last year, which included three wins from as many starts—including two Grade 1 triumphs at the Cheltenham Festival and Punchestown—Lossiemouth went into this season with high expectations.
She stunned on her reappearance at Fairyhouse in December, streaking clear of reigning Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle winner Teahupoo to comfortably claim the top-level Hatton’s Grace Hurdle and cement her status as the ante-post favourite for the Champion Hurdle on Cheltenham tips sites.
However, Lossiemouth’s last two outings have left a lot to be desired. The Willie Mullins-trained mare ran as flat as a pancake—according to jockey Paul Townend—when finishing runner-up in a blockbuster clash with Constitution Hill in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day.
She looked to bounce back from that in a mammoth showdown with stablemate and defending Champion Hurdle holder State Man in the Irish Champion Hurdle at the recent Dublin Racing Festival, but devastatingly fell four out to leave her rival to coast home from the rest of the field.
Lossiemouth was fighting tooth and nail with State Man when she crashed out in nasty fashion, and while we’ll never know if she would have gone on to beat the eight-year-old, she was certainly going well enough to be in with a chance and arguably looked to be travelling the better of the two.
She’s gone from the favourite for the Champion Hurdle to 5/1 and the big question is whether she can bounce back in the day one feature.
There are certainly excuses for her last two runs, and if Lossiemouth can go to Cheltenham in fine fettle and not affected by her heavy fall at the Dublin Racing Festival, there’s still a good chance she can bring the fight to Constitution Hill.
After all, she isn’t the only horse in the field for the Champion Hurdle that has question marks hanging over her. Constitution Hill is rightly the odds-on favourite based on the seasonal form, but Lossiemouth wasn’t herself at Kempton and he might have been punished for a blunder at the last in the International Hurdle on Cheltenham Trials Day if he faced better opposition.
It remains unclear at this stage if Brighterdaysahead will turn up for the Champion Hurdle or the Mares’ Hurdle, with connections reportedly still favouring the latter. That’s a massive boost for Lossiemouth’s chances if so, and it’s impossible to look too much into State Man’s Irish Champion Hurdle win given the circumstances at Leopardstown.
After the race, Mullins outlined that the Champion Hurdle is still the aim for Lossiemouth in March, claiming: “Unless Rich thinks differently, we’re happy to go for the Champion Hurdle.
“When she won the Hatton’s Grace at Fairyhouse she was running at a four-mile pace and we always settled her in behind because she was so keen.
“She is bred to be way faster than State Man, but in the Christmas Hurdle she just wasn’t used to that fast pace that they go around Kempton. I didn’t think that was anything to do with zest, it was just to do with the way we’d been teaching her to race.”
