Henry Daly will make a decision over Hillcrest's Cheltenham Festival participation in the middle of the coming week.
The seven-year-old, successful in each of his four completed starts over timber - including an eight-length success in the Grade 2 Prestige Novices' Hurdle at Haydock Park last month - is the 4-1 joint-favourite for the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle a week on Friday.
But Daly wants to see whether recent tuition to improve Hillcrest's jumping has worked before committing the son of Stowaway to take part.
"The problem with the horse is that he's got such a huge stride and, when he jumps, his back end overtakes his front end," said Daly.
"He has done some schooling with Yogi Breisner and Laura Collett, just to brush up his jumping - we are just trying to make sure we have got it all right.
"He will school on Tuesday and we will see how that goes. If he doesn't go to Cheltenham he will go to Aintree."
Meanwhile, L’Homme Presse could step step up to three miles for the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, Venetia Williams has revealed.
The seven-year-old is a 9-2 chance for the two-and-a-half mile Turners Novices’ Chase on Thursday week – a race in which he is due to meet the Irish pair Bob Olinger and Galopin Des Champs.
But drying conditions in the Cotswolds could see L’Homme Presse, whose four victories over fences include the Grade 2 Dipper Chase at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day and the top-level Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase at Sandown Park last month, re-route to the three-mile option - for which he can be backed at 11-2 - the previous day.
“He has entries in both the Turners Novices' Chase and the Brown Advisory,” Williams said yesterday.
“The Dipper is run over half a furlong longer than the Turners at the Festival, and he didn’t look like he needed to come back in distance that day.
“His owner, Andrew Edwards, always said that the weather would make. the decision, and the door to three miles is open.
“If he doesn’t go up to three miles this month, he will do so next year.”
