After an encouraging recent run on the flat, Marlonette is selected to win today's featured £20,000 Supporters Club Lartigue Hurdle at a bumper eight-race Listowel fixture.
Marlonette was one of the better juvenile hurdlers of last season, a fact that Willie Mullins's filly underlined when finishing sixth, after a slightly unlucky run, to Commanche Court in the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham last March.
Firm ground scuppered her chance at Liverpool subsequently and she disappointed at Punchestown, but there was plenty to like about Marlonette in a 12-furlong handicap at Galway two weeks ago when she ran fourth to the fit One More Spin. Edward O'Grady's charge reopposes today and holds his chance, but Marlonette looks the better hurdler and will strip fitter today.
The progressive Quinze tops the weights and will have his supporters, but his trainer Pat Hughes is concerned about how effective Quinze will be on the ground. Willie Mullins will have no such fears about the surface and, with his horses in such fine form, Marlonette is preferred to Quinze and the British-trained Worcester and Newton Abbot winner Palamon.
John Oxx and John Murtagh could combine to win the opener with Lady Spy, runner-up on both her starts so far, but who can benefit from Welsh Lion's lengthy absence from the racetrack to break her duck.
Oxx and Murtagh will also fancy their chances with Shauna's Honey in the following maiden, but she faces a tough opponent in Mystic Step, who made a fine debut behind Mr Lightfoot and Via Verbano at Leopardstown.
The form of that race was boosted by both those horses good runs in a listed race at the Curragh on Sunday and although Mystic Ring is unproven with give in the ground, it will be disappointing if she doesn't build on that initial good impression.
Dermot Weld ups Drumgor Prince to two miles for the John Lynch Handicap and that could prove the trick to this son of Robellino who was staying on well at the end of his last race over a mile and a half at Galway.
Richard Dunwoody may be out of luck on Quinze in the big race but could well get compensation in the first division of the maiden hurdle on Michael Hourigan's Amberleigh House.
