Thoughts on Marmande at Lingfield today

Marmande makes her return to action this evening (Saturday August 9th) after a break in the 18.50 at Lingfield. George Baker has the ride in the 1 mile handicap for three year olds. Marmande improved with each start in maidens over the winter. She was then given a break to fill out her frame and has grown quite a bit in the interim. She looks to have strengthened and the ought to improve accordingly. Her work at home has been solid visually and the data indicates an improvement. She is reasonably fit, although there will be some improvement for the run. It is her first start on turf and not having had many chances to gallop on it with the hard summer this year that might be a bit new for her. She isn’t very well drawn and that can be quite important at Lingfield, although it does depend on rail movements which haven’t been posted up by the clerk of the course so one assumes the track is at full width.

The race is an open contest, Libra Romana was unlucky not to win last week and is a worthy favourite in this company. Dark Phantom ran well two starts back and can maybe be forgiven a poor performance at Brighton which is course not every horse enjoys, the trainers horses are also running incredibly well at the moment.

Marmande (chestnut) working with Fireback.