Jack Cleary

The most telling number is this: last year he was winning around 1 in every 14 races. This season that has jumped to 1 in 10. That kind of jump in a single year is not luck — it is a rider finding his feet and earning the trust of better trainers with better horses.

Nowhere is that trust more visible than in his relationship with A P O'Brien, one of the most powerful training operations in the sport. Cleary has ridden 79 times for O'Brien and won 18 of them — a win rate of 23%, or nearly 1 in every 4 rides. When a trainer of that calibre keeps putting you up, it tells you something. It means the horse is expected to run well, and Cleary is delivering.

He also has a sharp eye for conditions. On wet, soft ground — the kind of heavy, energy-sapping surface that sorts the good riders from the great ones — Cleary wins 22% of his races, 6 from 27. That is more than double his overall rate, which suggests he rides with real intelligence when the ground gets testing, adjusting his timing and his horse's effort in a way that separates technically sound jockeys from the rest.

Then there is Cork, where Cleary has won 6 races from just 12 rides — a remarkable 50% record at one track. Half his rides there have ended in the winner's enclosure. Whether that comes down to his reading of the track, the types of horses he rides there, or simple confidence built up over time, it is the kind of dominance at a specific venue that experienced punters notice quickly. At 46 career winners and still only three years in, Jack Cleary is the kind of young jockey worth watching very closely.