Jamie Hamilton

The headline numbers for this season tell one story: 24 winners from 345 rides, which works out at roughly 1 in every 14 — around 7%. That is a slight dip from last year's 9%, and any jockey will tell you that a drop of two percentage points across hundreds of rides is not nothing. But zoom in on the last fortnight and a different picture emerges. Hamilton has ridden 3 winners from just 18 rides in the past two weeks — that is 17%, more than double his season average. When a jockey whose numbers have softened suddenly catches fire like that, it is usually worth paying attention.

Three of his 125 career wins have come at the top level — Class 1 races, the elite end of the sport — with victories at Wetherby and Haydock Park among them. Haydock in particular is one of Britain's most respected tracks, and winning there at the highest level is not something every jockey manages in a full career, let alone within their first four years.

His most reliable working relationship is with trainer Mark Walford, with whom he has ridden 12 winners from 163 races together — again around 1 in every 14, a steady and productive partnership built over a significant number of rides. The sheer volume of opportunities Walford gives him suggests a genuine trust on both sides. At Southwell, meanwhile, Hamilton has been noticeably sharp: 3 winners from just 12 rides there puts his win rate at 1 in 4 at that venue, which is the kind of course form that makes trainers with horses entered there pick up the phone.

Still only four years in, Hamilton has already ticked boxes — big-race wins, a century of career winners, a course he dominates — that some jockeys spend a decade chasing. The slight dip in numbers this season is the one note of caution, but recent form suggests he may be about to answer that question emphatically.