The novice Irish Panther will run in Wednesday's BetMGM Queen Mother Champion Chase after connections opted not to declare for Tuesday's Arkle.
Trained by father and son team Eddie and Patrick Harty, the lightly-raced nine-year-old has made a highly promising start to life over the larger obstacles this season, winning at Naas on debut before a half-length second to Romeo Coolio in the Grade 1 Racing Post Novice Chase at Leopardstown on Boxing Day.
He held options in both top-class races at Cheltenham this week and Eddie Harty has made clear why the day-two highlight was chosen as the horse's next assignment.
He said on Racing TV's Luck On Sunday programme: "[After] a lot of thought we've come to the Champion. In the end, [there were] three things. His age, he's an age that he should be going for the Champion; his jumping is good enough, I mean if it's not good enough for the Champion Chase then it's not good enough for the Arkle. That's the long and the short of it.
"Marine Nationale is out, we don't know what else is out at this stage, but we still left it down to declaration stage, having sort of decided after casting the net wide for opinions that the Champion would either be the braver or the more stupid call - time will tell which.
"Realistically, when we looked at the declarations at 09:40 [on Sunday] all of the ones that you'd expect to be in it were in it, in the exception of Romeo Coolio which was well flagged beforehand. So we decided to throw the dice and go to Wednesday instead.
"If you want to bring it down to the lowest tier, he doesn't know he's not in a novice race so he's not going there with any mindset that 'I'm stepping up here', that is down to us."
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