Mullins again

The Tralee festival winds up this weekend with the number of runners on both days holding up well

The Tralee festival winds up this weekend with the number of runners on both days holding up well. Today's feature is the £15,000 Premier Nursery where Rainbow Style can continue Paddy Mullins' excellent week.

The Guinness Gold Cup and the Denny Chase are already in the Mullins bag and with the ground riding on the soft side, the two-year-old looks up to bringing up the big race treble.

Rainbow Style made Sharp Focus pull out the stops to win at Galway and again found a Dermot Weld runner too good when third to the National Stakes hopeful Jammaal at Leopardstown three weeks ago.

Jammaal has aspirations of being among the leaders of the current crop of Irish juveniles so the quality of this field should be more suitable. Benovia could be the one to make Rainbow Style work for victory.

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Have Merci tops the weights in the four-year-old hurdle and few will be willing to oppose her after an impressive nine lengths success in a Tramore handicap last time.

The ground should not be a problem for the mare which is not something that can be guaranteed for the prolific Pat Hughes trained Akasian.

The Tipperary winner Dear Empress also has good placed form with Bob What and will be hard to tackle in the mares maiden hurdle, while Slaneyside could be worth an interest in the mile maiden.

Tomorrow's novice hurdle features the third appearance over hurdles of Stage Affair and it will be a shock if Tony McCoy's mount doesn't maintain his unbeaten record.

Stage Affair is likely to be at prohibitive odds however and as a betting medium the novice chase could be a better option.

Go Roger Go made a winning return to action at Galway by getting up close to home to edge out Dante's Battle. They meet again here with Dante's Battle 7lbs better off and over this flatter track, his front running tactics should be even more effective.

The 0-109 handicap hurdle sees Afrostar turned out for the second time this week and this time, Michael Hourigan's charge can get his head in front.

Afrostar ran a fine race on Tuesday to finish second to Moving On Up after making most of the running. Two miles around here clearly suits him and in this company, Afrostar will be hard to peg back.

Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor is the racing correspondent of The Irish Times. He also writes the Tipping Point column