TODAY'S MEETING:DESPITE BEING the undoubted King of Ballybrit, Dermot Weld hasn't saddled a winner on the Friday of the Galway festival for the last five years. But that statistic can bite the dust with Natural High in this evening's €65,000 feature.

A strong field of 18 runners line up for the mile-and-a-half Guinness Handicap, including the one-time classic prospect Vitruvian Man, who tops the weights, and a former Galway Mile winner in Celtic Dane.

There are plenty of other hopefuls further down the weights too, but it could turn out that, even off a mark of 90, Natural High will prove to be a blot on the handicap.

This will be just a fifth career start for the regally-bred son of Sadler’s Wells, who only made his debut at last year’s festival when becoming a rare bumper winner for the Moyglare Stud.

After that he followed up in a flat maiden at Tipperary, before failing to cope with very soft ground back at Galway in October.

Natural High wasn’t seen again until winning easily at Killarney in May, and on the face of it he has hardly escaped under the handicapper’s radar on what he has achieved so far.

But Weld has entered Natural High for the Ebor Handicap at York in just over two weeks and, in terms of preparation, this race looks to fall pretty much with ideal timing.

Weld will also be hopeful of victory in the mile-and-a-half maiden where he runs Raffaello Santi, who was runner-up to Big Occasion in his last start.

However, Aidan O’Brien runs three in a race he has won for the last two years, and while Battleoftrafalgar and Quest For Gold have form in 2010, Johnny Murtagh has elected to ride the Montjeu colt Falcon Flight, who belied his 33 to 1 odds when third on his sole start to date at Navan last October.

Pointilliste’s first start in Ireland was hardly earth-shattering, but Noel Meade’s horse can come on from that effort behind Profound Beauty in the concluding conditions race.

Pointilliste was a very decent performer for the Wildenstein family in France where he counted a Longchamp Group Three among five career victories.

Anything close to that sort of level will make him a major player here in a race where Salute Him’s stamina could be suspect and ground conditions may be against Sagamix’s half-sister Myrine, who bolted up by a distance on her last start at Ballinrobe.

Charles Byrnes sends Alfa Beat for the Galway Blazers Chase and the progressive six-year-old can complete a four-timer after a hurdle success last time and chase wins at Wexford and Roscommon.

The Byrnes-trained Kalellshan has a monster 12.8 to carry in the opening amateur handicap hurdle with a 6lb penalty for winning here earlier in the week.

However, with a bottom-weight of 11.5 there isn’t a great handicap spread.

Kalellshan is clearly in good heart right now.