P Twomey

The numbers this season are genuinely striking. Thirty-five winners from 144 runners works out at a 24% win rate — roughly one in every four runners sent out comes back a winner. In a sport where even the very best yards typically win one in five or six, that kind of efficiency is hard to ignore. It suggests a trainer who is picking the right races for the right horses, not simply throwing runners at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Some of those winners owe a debt to the weather. On wet or muddy ground, Twomey's record jumps to 7 wins from 19 races — a 37% win rate, or better than one in three. That is the kind of figure that makes you want to check the forecast before the declaration stage. It hints at a yard that either seeks out wet-ground specialists or simply knows how to prepare horses for the conditions when the rain arrives.

His most important working relationship is with jockey W J Lee, who has ridden 25 winners from 95 races for the yard — that is 26%, or roughly one in every four rides converting into a win. That level of consistency across nearly a hundred races together speaks to genuine trust and understanding between trainer and rider. But the most electric partnership in the yard belongs to a horse called Carmers: four wins from just seven races together, a conversion rate that would make most trainers blush with pride.

Gowran Park is a smaller track that rarely features in the headlines, but Twomey has quietly built a record there of 3 winners from 6 runners — exactly half. It is the kind of local dominance that suggests he understands the track, or simply times his horses' runs to perfection when they arrive. For a trainer only four years into his career, the whole picture points in one direction: upward, and quickly.