LAST year’s Cheltenham Champion Bumper hero Black Hercules is the ante-post favourite for the Grade 1 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, for which a total of 97 entries were revealed this week.

Trained by Willie Mullins, Black Hercules most recently won a Grade 3 hurdle at Cork in December and is one of 21 entered by his trainer for the three-mile Cheltenham contest.

There are a record 42 Irish-trained entries in total, including highly-regarded Grade 2 victor No More Heroes (Gordon Elliott) and the consistent Martello Tower (Margaret Mullins).

Noel Meade took the spoils last year with Very Wood and has four engaged, headed by easy Navan scorer Snow Falcon, while Mouse Morris has nominated Alpha Des Obeaux and Baily Cloud.

A strong British entry includes Orbo Ab Chao (Alan King), who narrowly got the better of Value At Risk (Dan Skelton) at Cheltenham last Saturday, and previous course and distance scorer Blaklion (Nigel Twiston-Davies), who was narrowly defeated at Doncaster last Saturday by Caracci Apache.