Marcus Tregoning

The numbers tell a stark story. Last season Tregoning was winning around 1 in every 8 races, a rate that would make any trainer feel like they had cracked the code. This season, that has collapsed to just 4 winners from 130 runners — roughly 1 in every 32. That is not a blip; that is a slump, and a significant one. To put it in perspective, if you sent out 130 horses expecting to win 1 in 8, you would hope for around 16 winners. Four is a very different outcome.

One area where the yard still has something to shout about is fast, dry ground. On those conditions, Tregoning's horses have won 3 from 29 races this season — roughly 1 in every 10 — which is meaningfully better than his overall picture. It suggests there may be a core of horses in the yard that genuinely perform when the ground is in their favour, and that when conditions align, the team is still capable of getting results.

His most trusted partnership in the saddle is with jockey Trevor Whelan, who has ridden 22 times for the yard and converted 2 of those into winners. That works out to roughly 1 win in every 11 rides together — better than the yard's overall average this season, which at least hints at a productive working relationship, even if the winners have not been flowing freely for either man.

Four years into a training career, Tregoning is still building. The 48 career winners show this is not a yard running on empty — there is genuine substance here. But the drop from 13% to 3% in a single season is the kind of thing that demands attention, and the next few months will say a great deal about whether this is a temporary dip or something that needs a more fundamental rethink.