For the interests of accuracy, Chris, Duke of Marmalade has won 3 Group 1s this season. You're forgetting the Ganay, where he beat Saddex and Sageburg. Both of those won Group 1s next time out.
A measure of how much Duke of Marmalade improved between that run and Ascot is that Saddex beat Pressing a head next time out in Italy. DoM beat Pressing 5 1/2 lengths at Ascot. The trustworthiness (if not the level) of the Ascot form was proven in the Eclipse - DoM could have gone there and hacked up for a fourth Group 1 in a little over 2 months. The kind of thing you said elsewhere is extremely rare and difficult no matter how 'easy' the races - and you'd be right.
On the subject of Youmzain, I think the idea that he "needs his ground" is bunk. He's shown himself to be effective on a range of going. Making excuses about the ground and handling the track at Epsom is clutching at straws - he simply got going too late in a race which wasn't quite run at a fast enough pace for him (I backed him). Given a more prominent position in a truer-run race at Saint-Cloud, he was able to turn a 3/4 length defeat into a 1/2 length win. He didn't "completely outclass" SoF.
For all that, I agree with your central point that they should be much closer in the betting and that the concerns over DoM's ability to be equally or more effective over 12f warrant taking him on when you've got a proven classy stayer like Youmzain to go to war with.
I don't quite understand why the perceived "Ballydoyle hype" pisses you off so much. If it really is hype, if there really is no basis for it (apart from the 13 soft Group 1s they've already won this season, I guess) then presumably Timeform, the Racing Post and the odds compilers at all the major bookies are also suffering from it. Isn't that exactly what you want? 4/1 about something you think should be, I dunno, 6/4? Max bet time, surely?
