Five-time French Grade 1 winner Theleme will prepare for the Stayers’ Hurdle with a run on the Flat.
Successful in the Grande Course de Haies d'Auteuil (French Champion Hurdle) ahead of Klassical Dream and Hewick in May, the Arnaud Chaille-Chaille-trained gelding has been campaigned with a tilt at the Stayers' Hurdle in March. With no obvious prep races over hurdles in France at this time of year, connections have been forced to switch to a flat race at Nantes in February to get the seven-year-old on song.
"Cheltenham is very much the plan," said Bertand Le Metayer, racing manager for the Gordon family. "It's probably not ideal as we've only got one Flat race that suits him for a prep run and that is on February 23.
"It's not really ideal, but we can't really prep him otherwise. I know it's not the most usual programme, but the French system is not made at all for running on both sides of the Channel.
"The horse has just won a Grade One, we gave him a break after that, and he looks fabulous for it.
"The Flat race he is going for is at Tarbes, which is a nice, big oval with a long straight and it will be the first (meeting) of the year, so we expect it to be nice, soft ground.
"Hopefully the race will just give him some rhythm. We have a short amount of time to get him ready and we don't want to squeeze the lemon too much.
"He's only been back in training three weeks, and we've got five weeks until the Flat race, so we'll give him a nice blow there, jump him over some English hurdles and then take him to Cheltenham."
Theleme is currently 4/1 joint-favourite with Paddy Power for the Stayers' Hurdle on Thursday of the Cheltenham Festival.
