Bernard Llewellyn

Some of the numbers are harder to explain away. His most frequent jockey partnership is with Jordan Williams, but across 21 rides together they have yet to visit the winner's enclosure — not once. Likewise, his most regularly run horse Beaune has gone 14 races without a win under Llewellyn's watch. At some point a trainer has to ask whether a partnership is working, and 14 races is a long time to wait for an answer.

There is, however, one real bright spot in the data. On wet, muddy ground — the kind of conditions that make most trainers wince — Llewellyn's horses have won 3 from 18 races, a 17% win rate that is dramatically better than his overall figures and works out to nearly 1 in every 6 runners. That is not a fluke. It suggests he either specifically targets those conditions, has horses in his yard that are physically built for the mud, or both. In a sport where most small trainers simply take what they can get, finding a genuine edge in any conditions is worth paying attention to.

At four years in, Llewellyn is still learning his trade. The overall numbers are lean, but 33 career winners shows he is operational and competitive, and that wet-ground record hints at a trainer who knows his horses and picks his spots carefully. The question is whether he can translate that niche strength into something broader as his yard develops.