John C McConnell

The headline achievements are hard to ignore. McConnell has won seven top-level races, the kind that define careers, at venues including Cheltenham, Aintree, Perth and Ayr. Two of those came at the Cheltenham Festival itself — racing's most scrutinised stage — and a third arrived at Aintree, another occasion where only the best yards tend to show up and compete. Adding a further Cheltenham success as recently as January 2025 suggests this is not a yard that peaked early. The big days keep coming.

Day to day, the numbers are more modest but still tell a coherent story. This season the yard has sent out 42 winners from 682 runners — roughly 1 in every 16 races. That sits at around 6%, which in the volume game of training horses is a workable return, especially when the quality at the top of the operation is this high. Where the team really hits its stride is on normal ground, winning 24 from 239 races in those conditions — 10%, or about 1 in every 10. That kind of improvement when conditions are straightforward suggests the horses are trained to run their best race when nothing is working against them.

The most reliable combination McConnell can call on is jockey Alex Harvey, who has ridden 15 winners from 133 trips for the yard. That works out at 11%, or just over 1 in every 9 rides — notably better than the yard's overall average. When a jockey's numbers improve that much on horses from the same trainer, it usually means they understand each other well.

Perhaps the most quietly impressive detail is Kelso. Four winners from just seven runners at that track amounts to well over half the horses sent there winning their race. In a sport where even excellent trainers tend to win around 1 in 8 or 1 in 10 at their best venues, that ratio is striking. It is the kind of local knowledge and targeting that adds up, race by race, to a career worth watching.