DAVID Marnane has every reason to be hopeful that Lady Tilbury could make waves at the upcoming festival of racing that is Royal Ascot. After all, he knows what it takes to win at the meeting.

A decade ago he was successful the Wokingham with Dandy Bay, while more recently Marnane captured the Royal Hunt Cup with Settle For Bay in the hands of Billy Lee. The latter was in the saddle when Lady Tilbury provided MRC International, an ownership concept devised by Marnane, with their first success last month at Cork, having been denied by less than a length on her Dundalk debut.

Marnane felt that her win at Cork, in spite of its impressive three-length margin, was possibly not enough to have her primed for Ascot, and she was turned out to contest, and win, at Tipperary this week. The race chosen was won last year by the subsequent Group 3 winner Twilight Jet, and he has Group 1 aspirations at the royal meeting.

Lady Tilbury is a daughter of Bated Breath (Dansili), who stands at Juddmonte’s Banstead Manor Stud, and she is the best performer to date from the stallion’s seventh crop. Could Lady Tilbury be the first of that crop to earn blacktype? If she does she will join 50 others from the first six crops, including 14 group winners.

Success at the royal meeting for Lady Tilbury would not be the first for a member of her female family. Her winning dam, Cats Eyes (Echo Of Light), is a half-sister to the stakes-winning dam of Muteela (Dansili), successful in the Listed Sandringham Handicap and sold last year for €350,000 at Goffs. Lady Tilbury is closely related to that Royal Ascot heroine.

Muteela is one of three stakes winners out of Nufoos (Zafonic), and the others are Group 1 Middle Park Stakes winner Awzaan (Alhaarth) and the Group 3 winner Muraaqaba (Dubawi).

Nufoos and Cats Eyes are among nine winners from Desert Lynx (Green Desert).

Lady Tilbury was bred in Rutland, one of the smallest counties in England, by Manor Farm Stud. The farm was established in 1970 by Richard and Tessa Watson and has been the nursery for a number of top-class runners. Set on about 100 acres, it is now run by their son Toby. The farm also bred and raced Cats Eyes. She was trained by Robert Cowell and won four times at three, her first season to race.

At stud Cats Eyes has not enjoyed much success to date, though her first foal, Bearag (Dutch Art), sold as a yearling for 110,000gns. She managed a single placing. Lady Tilbury is now her first winner of any kind, and she could be much better than that.