Jack Jones

That overall volume is worth pausing on. Getting 299 runners in a single season means Jones is busy, ambitious, and trusted by owners to keep horses active and competitive. Not every trainer at this stage of their career commands that kind of book of runners, and converting 33 of them into wins shows the horses are being placed sensibly and arriving at the track ready to perform.

One area where Jones clearly has an edge is when the rain arrives. On slightly wet ground, his horses win 5 from 30 races — a 17% win rate, or roughly 1 in every 6. That's meaningfully better than his overall average, and it's the kind of pattern that experienced punters notice quickly. Whether it's the way he conditions his horses or the types he recruits, something about a soft surface suits the Jones yard.

His most frequent jockey partnership is with Dylan Hogan, who has been on board for 47 of those rides and turned 2 of them into winners. That's a 4% win rate — around 1 in every 24 — which is modest, and probably reflects the pair taking on tougher assignments together rather than any lack of ability from either man. Partnerships built on volume often involve the harder races, not the banker bets. His association with Afton Down, meanwhile, reads as 1 win from 5 races together — a horse Jones knows well, even if the results have been mixed so far.

At four years in and 104 winners to his name, Jones is past the experimental stage and into something that looks more like a genuine training operation. The next question is whether he can push beyond the 1-in-9 average and start troubling the bigger days. The foundations are clearly there.