Quietly compiling one of the best form books at the track — his last five runs read 74, 77, 78, 79, 83, capped by a win at A4 last week, and Rosemary Price's 35% kennel is the strongest in the race. The step back up to A3 holds no fears on those figures. What does is the geography: trap 6 wins under 12% at this grade, and only one win from nine course-and-distance runs suggests he finds ways not to finish first here. Impossible to dismiss, hard to make the pick from that box.

A three-time course-and-distance winner who was rated 92 as recently as three starts back — on her best form she wins this comfortably. But the last two outings brought a pair of fourth places with ratings drifting down to 56, and her last clocking was a full second off her best. In the frame in nine of ten runs here, so she's about as track-proven as they come, and the rail draw is fair at this grade. If she bounces back she's right there; the recent evidence just favours others.

Gets the best box on the track — trap 4 wins nearly one in four at this grade — and Vincent Lynch's 30% kennel doesn't send dogs out for exercise. She's won twice over this course and distance and hit an 87 rating four starts back, but her last three runs have been rated in the 50s and 60s and her recent times are nearly a second off her 29.10 best. The draw and the kennel give her a puncher's chance; the current form needs to step up two lengths.

Owns the fastest time in the race on paper at 29.03 — but she set it at Newbridge, and her two runs at this track have produced a fifth and a sixth with nothing to suggest the form travels. Her last clocking was the slowest in the field by some way, the ratings have been patchy since arriving from Newbridge, and her kennel wins about one race in sixteen. The raw ability that won A4s elsewhere is real; the evidence she can reproduce it at Mullingar isn't there yet.