Will it be Min the Merciless or Balko the Bully on a day full of fizz?

Note to the locals and the tabloid snappers – there's racing on as well on Friday afternoon.

Ladies' day is a traditional riot of colour and cleavage as Liverpool's womenfolk celebrate the arrival of spring, with an emphasis on the celebration.

Yet there's an awful lot to be excited about for those who put punting before prosecco as well.

Aintree stages another four Grade 1 races and welcomes its one and only top-level winner from Cheltenham to the party.

It's possibly no coincidence that Balko Des Flos is a Gigginstown horse based with Henry de Bromhead rather than Gordon Elliott, so he's not needed for the endgame of the Irish trainers' title battle at Punchestown.

His festival triumph in the Ryanair Chase was arguably overshadowed by Penhill's defeat of Supasundae in a memorable Stayers' Hurdle 40 minutes later.

Yet don't let that fool you into thinking he is anything other than a high-class horse – even if runner-up Un De Sceaux was not quite at his best, beating him more than four lengths takes some doing.

See Balko Des Flos win the Ryanair Chase

But so does following up in the 2m4f JLT Melling Chase here. Six Ryanair winners have tried and onlyAlbertas Run has succeeded.

Two of the others had the misfortune to face a tip-top two-miler who was upped in trip, in Master Minded and Sprinter Sacre, and it's a similar story for Balko Des Flos.

Min may lack the brilliance of Rich Ricci's outstanding pair Douvan and Vautour, but that could be said of nearly every other chaser in training over the past few years and there's no doubt he's a rattling good horse.

He's only had his measure taken on course by Altior in nine races since joining Willie Mullins and the form he showed in finishing second to that phenomenal rival in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham was good enough to have won the race in many a year.

Min: bidding to go one place better than in the Queen Mother Champion ChaseCredit: Alan Crowhurst

Champion trainer has wings

Altior himself waits for the Celebration Chase at Sandown, although that has not hindered the progress of his trainer Nicky Henderson, who flew past £3 million in prize-money for the season with a Grade 1 hat-trick on the first day of the Grand National meeting and could be out of sight at the top of the trainers' table by tea-time on Friday.

Although he's famously never won the National, Henderson took the Randox Health Topham Chase over the same fences three years running from 2013 to 2015.

And he looks to have trained O O Seven very much with an eye to a second crack at a race he finished fourth in as a novice last year.

Fred Winter runner-up Style De Garde gives him a chance in the Betway Top Novices' Hurdle, which the champion is bidding to win for a sixth time since 2010.

His task is made easier by the remarkable fact that only one horse who ran in the Supreme Novices' Hurdle lines up against him – Colin Tizzard's Slate House, who was well held when he fell at the last at Cheltenham.

Henderson has only won the Doom Bar Sefton Novices' Hurdle once and is clearly determined to boost that puny tally, fielding three of the 14 runners.

The trio have dominated the market since betting opened on the £100,000 race, with unlucky-in-running Albert Bartlett third Santini marginally favoured to turn the tables on second-placed stablemate Ok Corral from Cheltenham.

And the ante-post exchanges also pointed to Henderson's chance of landing a fifth Betway Mildmay Novices' Chase, with JLT Novices' Chase runner-up Terrefort favourite to go one place better on his step up to 3m1f.

In the unlikely event that all those fail, there's always Pym and Mister Fisher in the Weatherbys Racing Bank Standard Open National Hunt Flat Race.

He's due another victory, having won the very first running of this contest with Rustle way back in 1987 – the era of Babycham rather than prosecco.

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