Frances Cash, the Co Kildare producer who already has five Dublin supreme hunter championships to her credit, is hot favourite to add a sixth when the supreme title is decided in the RDS main arena this morning.
Cash's runner for the supreme honours is the heavyweight winner Cashmere, a four-year-old son of Big Sink Hope which she found at the Goresbridge sales in Co Kilkenny for owner Neil Holloway.
The big grey, which won the hunter championships at his only two outings this year in Mullingar and Lambertstown, was uncontested in his class yesterday, much to the delight of his pilot.
"You have to get that first red," she said after her win. "Until you get that you can't get into the main arena."
Cash took the Dublin title 12 months ago with the chestnut heavyweight Caruso, which maintained its form when taking the championship at Cheltenham on his first outing on the British circuit with Robert Oliver last week.
Now Cash is aiming for back-to-back wins in the Dublin arena and the four-year-old Cashmere could be just the horse to do it for her.
Another grey inmate of Cash's Clane stables, Muscatel, who is three years older, failed in his effort to add another red rosette to the tally when going down in his medium-weight class to Wendy Trevithick's Nimrod in a reversal of the original lineup.
But Trevithick's bay, a six-year-old by Don Tristan, had stood over Muscatel in the Gorey champion ship and yesterday's judges also found him more to their liking than the grey on closer inspection.
The final piece in the jigsaw for today's championship was completed at 7.30 p.m. last night when Fenya, P.J. Hegarty's daughter of Good Thyne that took the mare tricolour last year, again topped the lightweight mare line-up with Ann Leonard in the saddle.
Fenya will be hard to beat for the mare title today, but the lightweight championship is likely to be decided between George Dobbs's Chester, which gave jockey Jane Bradbury a birthday win yesterday, and Caraid McAlpine's Castletown, reserve lightweight and reserve four-year-old last term, but a better horse a year on.