Max Young

The partnership with jockey Murray Dodd has become the yard's most familiar combination, the pair teaming up 12 times without a win to show for it. Likewise, the horse Onehundredneighty has been a regular flag-bearer for Young, racing seven times together — again without success. There is clearly a relationship being built here, a trainer and his trusted allies going back to the well repeatedly, but the results have yet to follow.

To be fair, things were not always quite this stark. Last season Young managed a 1% win rate — roughly one winner in every hundred runners — which is modest but at least puts a tick on the board. This season that has slipped to zero across 84 races, and the last two weeks have brought more of the same: seven runners out, none back in front. A 1% win rate might not sound like much, but the difference between 1% and 0% is the difference between a yard with hope and a yard searching for any kind of foothold.

What Young has, though, is time. Four years in, some trainers are still finding their feet, building a stable of owners and horses that can actually compete at a level where winning becomes possible. The honest summary right now is that the horses are running but not winning, the jockey partnerships are forming but not clicking, and the yard is waiting for the moment everything lines up. Every trainer has lean patches — the ones who last are the ones who keep sending them out.