Willie Mullins (11 February 2026): "She was disappointing at the Dublin Racing Festival. It’s a very open Champion Hurdle and I’ll have a good word with Rich Ricci and see what he thinks about it. A lot will depend on how the mare is herself. The form she was in the other day wouldn’t cut the mustard, so she might be better off going to a Mares’ Hurdle if she was in that sort of form."
Willie Mullins (08 October 2025): "We’ll look to get her started in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle. After that, you’ll all just have to guess which race she’ll go for! I don’t want to get into the hassle we had last season with last-minute changes. She’ll tell us how she is, but she’d look very tough to beat in the Mares’ Hurdle if we pointed her that way."
Willie Mullins (06 February 2025): "The Irish Champion Hurdle was going to be a hell of a race. I watched a head-on of Lossiemouth’s fall and a flock of seagulls took off just before she approached the hurdle, did that affect her? Something took her eye because she pricked her ears two strides before it and just didn’t get up. Thankfully, she’s good after the race. How lucky was State Man not to fall or pick up an injury when four metal shoes were sticking up in the air? I’ve seen lots of horses get injured that way. We were very lucky to win the race and that both of them didn’t fall. At the moment, we’re going for the Champion Hurdle with Lossiemouth. We’ve been training her for it for two years and we’re not steering away from it. If I want to sharpen her up, I could, but if you remember in the Triumph Hurdle, she ran away with Paul coming down the hill. We’ve been training her to settle, as we’ve been running her over two-and-a-half miles. If you go back to the Hatton’s Grace, it was a pedestrian race, so at Kempton she thought she was just cantering to the first hurdle, but they had gone and she thought ‘what’s happening here?’ That’s the way I read the race. When we want to kick her up to that speed, it will be no problem, I’m fairly confident anyway. Regards jockeys, Paul has never hidden his admiration for State Man. Obviously a lot can happen between now and then, but I can’t see Paul getting off State Man."
