TimeformBlog

Illustrious Forest (16:00) has shown vast improvement over today's course-and-distance on his last couple of starts and looks worth siding with again today. On his penultimate start here he easily accounted for Shirataki (comfortable winner from 2 lb higher since) by eight lengths, to which the handicapper responded by putting him up a stone in the weights. However, that failed to stop him following up, beating Royal Alcor by three quarters of a length here three weeks ago. He readily went clear of his rivals on the turn into the straight on that occasion, and the fact that he wandered around in the closing stages meant that his winning margin was eroded late on. That shouldn't detract from the fact that it was still ultimately a fairly comfortable victory, however, and he has every chance of landing the hat-trick here.

Lionrock sets the standard in the maiden (17:00) and remains open to improvement, but at the current prices preference is for Michael Bell's Ruacana, who created a fair impression over course-and-distance on debut seven days ago. Despite being beaten by ten and a half lengths, encouragement can be taken from the fact that he showed clear signs of inexperience, was poorly positioned given how things unfolded, and stayed on to decent effect after failing to get a clear run. Normal improvement from that run should see him thereabouts at the finish here.

Our final SmartPlay today comes in the closing handicap, where Marksbury (18:00) looks to have a sound chance of following up her recent course-and-distance victory. Marksbury has improved with each of her four runs at Wolverhampton this winter, and a 4lb rise to an official mark of 59 for her latest success looks perfectly fair, particularly given she is still lightly raced and managed a close second from a lb higher mark last winter. At the current prices she looks a bit overpriced.

Back Illustrious Forest @ 2.9 in the 16:00 at Wolverhampton
Back Ruacama @ 3.7 in the 17:00 at Wolverhampton
Back Marksbury @ 7.0 in the 18:00 at Wolverhampton

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