The most compelling chapter of his training career so far is his partnership with Diamond Cottage. Six wins from 43 races together might not sound like a thundering success rate, but the fact that one horse has accounted for more than a quarter of his entire career tally tells you something important: Saunders clearly knows this horse inside out, and when the two are in sync, they get results. That sort of long-running partnership between a trainer and a single horse is one of the quieter pleasures of the sport — a relationship built on patience and familiarity rather than big budgets.
Where Saunders tends to show best is on normal ground conditions, where his runners have won 1 from 8 races, a win rate of 12% — or roughly 1 in every 8, which is meaningfully better than his overall seasonal average. It is a small sample, but it is a useful pointer for anyone watching his runners: when the conditions are standard, his horses tend to show up more reliably.
Four years in, Saunders is still very much a trainer on the way up rather than one at the peak of his powers. Twenty-one winners is a real foundation, and the loyalty he has shown to a horse like Diamond Cottage suggests a yard that works with what it has rather than simply cycling through runners. The next step will be turning those occasional bright spots into something more consistent across a full season.
| Course | Races | Wins | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chepstow | 10 | 1 | 10% |
| Salisbury | 6 | 1 | 16.7% |
| Bath | 5 | 0 | 0% |
| Kempton Park | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| Wolverhampton | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| Epsom Downs | 1 | 0 | 0% |