Inthesmallhours made it third time lucky at Dundalk when running out a convincing winner of the mile-and-a-half maiden tonight.

Andy Oliver 's charge came to challenge over three furlongs out, under Gary Carroll, and was driven into a narrow lead early in the straight.

She galloped on strongly in the closing stages to post a two-and-three-quarter length success over well-backed 6/4 favourite Aird

The 5/2 winner went down by half-a-length to Tribal Star here three weeks ago having been fifth on debut 12 days previously.

Oliver said: "We think she is a nice filly. She's big and we just had to wait on her.

"We thought maybe just inexperience beat her the last time, and we felt she had improved this time and I think she is going to improve again because she took a good blow there.

"She did it very straightforward. The strong pace was good for her, took them along. She took over early enough in the straight and Gary gave her a lovely ride.

"We are looking forward to this filly. She has been improving physically all year and she has improved run to run.

"She has a good sound action, so we would be looking forward to turf next year, I think that will be her job.

"I don't think it would be a problem going up in trip, we were quite happy with that."

(Quotes by Michael Graham)