Marvellous Lady is a four-year-old Advertise filly, recently sourced from Ireland and now housed at the powerful James Owen yard in Newmarket.

Although yet to win in 11 starts, Marvellous Lady has displayed promise on more than one occasion and joins her new stable at the right end of the handicap. She was sixth in a 6f Fairyhouse maiden on her racecourse debut at two, beaten five lengths in a race that produced five subsequent winners, and was only just over two lengths behind the winner when sixth over 1m at Bellewstown last July.

She will need to improve upon the balance of her form to win races this year, but there are grounds for thinking she can do so. For starters, she was allotted an initial rating of 65 by the Irish assessor, yet that figure had dropped to the mid-40s by the time she made her most recent appearance at Dundalk in November. There is huge scope for progress from that sort of mark.

Furthermore, she has a pedigree that strongly indicates there will be more to come in the future. She is a half-sister to Roger Varian’s 80-rated 1m3f winner Mathematician, who was highly progressive as a four-year-old, and her dam is a half-sister to the Gr.2 Railway Stakes runner-up Alhaban. The dual Gr.2 winner and Gr.1 Prix Morny second Gutaifan, now a successful sire, is another near-relation.

The covering sire, Advertise, might have been a triple Gr.1-winning sprinter during his racing days, but he is getting the winners of a diverse range of races, and his runners are almost guaranteed to improve with time and racing. 

His eldest crop has only just turned four, but there is no doubting that 2024 was a breakout season for the Knockmullen House Stud sire. Andrew Balding’s Cool Hoof Luke won the Gr.2 Gimcrack Stakes, Secret Satire landed the Gr.3 Musidora Stakes over 1m2½f, and Al Shabab Storm took a 6f Gr.3 in Germany. Having been branded a disappointment in his first year at stud, Advertise is quickly repairing his reputation as his runners are maturing. 

Marvellous Lady remains a young filly with relatively few miles on the clock, and hopefully she can be yet another late-developing success story for her sire. We look forward to her debuting in Deva Racing colours, and she is certainly one to keep a close eye on for the duration of 2025.