Charlie Appleby

The really eye-catching part of Appleby's record is his success at the very top of the sport. He has trained 114 Class 1 winners — the most prestigious races in Britain — at some of the country's most celebrated venues, including Ascot, Newmarket and Newbury. Just in the space of five weeks this autumn, he landed top-level races at Newbury in late October and twice at Newmarket in September and October. Winning one of those races would make most trainers' year. Winning three in a single autumn tells you something about the calibre of horse Appleby is regularly working with.

His partnership with jockey William Buick deserves special mention. Together they have combined for 70 wins from 224 rides — that is 31%, or almost 1 in every 3 times Buick climbs aboard an Appleby-trained horse, it wins. That kind of alignment between trainer and jockey, where the understanding runs so deep it shows up clearly in the numbers, is rarer than it sounds.

Two other details stand out. Appleby's record on wet or muddy ground is almost freakish: 21 wins from just 40 races, meaning he wins more than half the time when conditions get testing. Most trainers struggle to identify which of their horses handle soft going — Appleby either knows exactly which ones thrive in it, or he has an unusual gift for preparing them. And at Kempton Park specifically, he has turned 38 runners into 20 winners, a conversion rate that suggests the track suits his horses perfectly, or that he picks his spots there with unusual precision. Four years in, and the evidence is already clear: this is one of the most effective training operations in the country.