IRISH trainer Willie Mullins has been made odds-on favourite to win the new Grade Two £75,000 Trull House Stud Mares' Novices' Hurdle which has been added to the Thursday programme of the 2016 Cheltenham Festival.

The novices' hurdle for fillies and mares brings the number of races during the week to 28 (seven a day) and replaces the St Patrick's Derby charity race which has taken place for the last six years.

The only other mares-only race at the fixture is the Grade One OLBG Mares' Hurdle which has been won in all but one of its eight runnings by Mullins.

His great mare Quevega won it no fewer than six times, on the last occasion in 2014. Mullins sent out a record eight winners at the four-day meeting this year.

Nicky Henderson, the most successful trainer at The Festival, said: "I am not surprisingly delighted to hear not only that there is going to be a 28th race at The Festival, but particularly that it is going to be a mares' novices' hurdle which will be an enormous boost to the National Hunt breeding fraternity. "We have been lucky enough to have trained a number of high-class and successful mares over the years both with home-breds and those bought at public auction and this new race, sponsored by such great supporters of National Hunt racing and breeding, Richard and Lizzie Kelvin Hughes at Trull House Stud, is great news."

The Festival in 2016 runs from Tuesday, March 15 to Friday, March 18.