Willie Mullins will be making a late call over whether Lossiemouth heads to Cheltenham for a rematch with Constitution Hill in Saturday's Unibet Hurdle.
The other option open to the star mare is the Irish Champion Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival on Sunday week.
Wherever she rocks up the champion trainer is expecting a sharper performance than the one she produced when chasing home Nicky Henderson's charge in the Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day.
Mullins said of that display: “Lossiemouth set off at about two and a half or even three-mile pace and she did well to finish as close as she did. We’d been settling her all the time and she just couldn’t handle the pace because that is what we’d been teaching her.
“To me the race was gone before she hit the first hurdle. She wasn’t competitive. I thought she ran well given what we’d been teaching her the last couple of years. We’ll sharpen her up at home. It will be different the next day. We haven’t decided on her next engagement, she’s in at Cheltenham and Leopardstown and we’ll have a war council in the next 24 hours and decide.”
Another potential Champion Hurdle candidate for Mullins is the five-year-old Anzadam, who is entered in this Sunday's two-mile Naas Racecourse Business Club Limestone Lad Hurdle but may wait for the Red Mills over further.
“I’m trying to find an intermediate race for him, and the Red Mills, maybe something like that,” said Mullins.
“He’s in at the Dublin Racing Festival, but I’m going to have a look and see. There’s a nice race on Sunday he’s entered for.
“We had him as a juvenile and he hurt himself, he gave himself a bang somewhere and we couldn’t get him out. I was so disappointed. Even though we had Majborough in the race (Triumph Hurdle), Anzadam was right up there, so that’s the sort of company I’d put him with."
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