6yo B Horse
Duke Of Marmalade - Capriolla (GB) [by In The Wings (GB)]

22s: 7-8-1

I wanted to write another profile while I had some momentum; I have doubts that tomorrow's headliners Avilius and Homesman will go on to contest the Melbourne Cup, no others racing this weekend have made the final field yet, and I didn't want to waste my effort on a non-runner. So why not Marmelo?

In 2017 I wrote on Marmelo's profile: here's the horse that will win The Cup. I checked. I was only joshing though. I'd looked at some genealogical filters of past winners and Marmelo was the only one in the current field who fell within the bounds. The reason I was joking about it was because I believed it was all a bit silly.

In yesterday's profile I wrote that only Steel Prince and Southern France survived this year's genealogical filtering so, given that this stuff doesn't change from year-to-year, where was Marmelo this time around? Well, in turns out this stuff does change from year-to-year! pedigreequery.com now sources their Dosage data from an Australian consortium who use additional/different chefs. These figures put Marmelo just out of bounds (and likely many of the others from history on whom my filters were based); I might try and update it again later.

In 2017 Hugh Bowman went for home waaaay too early and Marmelo's run ended with 300m to go. Post-race his trainer thought that he may have been left flat by his run in the Caulfield Cup. Bowman certainly expected more in the tank and a look at Marmelo's stats seemed to bear the hypothesis out.

The following year they elected to go straight to the Cup without a lead-up run. This decision bore fruit when he was only overhauled by the far too lightly-weighted Cross Counter in the last 50m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGUBQdYmiWY

The end result was perhaps even better than it looked: the Steward's Report recorded that he began awkwardly, tried to eat Avilius on leaving the gates and then finished up lame in his hind leg. He did get a pretty charmed run around the turn though, which saw him cut towards the inside and improve 8 places within 200m.

So what's changed this year? The Australian preparation surely hasn't. The intent is still to go straight into The Cup. His handicap has gone up 1kg though. Sort of. Hugh Bowman weighed 1kg over for last year's race, so his handicap is essentially unchanged. The northern hemisphere 4yos have been slugged an extra kilo this time, so given that he was beaten narrowly by the best of those last year and that the 3rd place horse (Prince of Arran) was 2 lengths further back: they'd be stoked, surely! The query is whether he's bringing the same form this year....

Per the Official French Ratings, he is: http://www.france-galop.com/en/hors...Xk4dW1uUitZdz09. His rating hasn't gone below 51.5 (i.e. 114) since the 2017 Melbourne Cup. The British ratings agree: 114 ahead of the 2018 Cup (a peak of 117 after it) and now back to 114.

One change this season is that he's had some shorter runs. Last year he didn't run below 2800m, this season he had 3 runs over 2400m. While his first showed an impressive finish (https://twitter.com/RacingTV/status/1117163356987764736), the next two 2400m performances were a little middling.

Back at 2800m and above he had two good runs. The first of these a nose behind Way To Paris at equal weights (and 4 lengths ahead of 3rd): https://youtu.be/JUYbtGgguiI. Way To Paris (115) would finish 2 lengths behind Waldgeist following this run, carrying the same, and Waldgeist (128) would next take out the Arc by 1.75L.

Another Prix Kergolay victory followed for Marmelo (https://youtu.be/e8Gd3hkddl4), narrowly finishing ahead of Call The Wind (115) who would split Holdthaisgreen (116) and Dee Ex Bee (119) in his next race at equal weights.

What a long-winded way to say that Marmelo does indeed seem to be going as well as he was last year, if not better.... And if that's the case he looks a very good chance of another top finish.