Pat Phelan

The last 12 months tell a mixed story. Six winners from 108 runners means he's winning roughly 1 in every 18 races, which is a dip from last season's rate of around 1 in 12. It's not a dramatic fall, but it's the kind of slide that keeps a trainer honest. The honest truth is that at this level, finding winners is hard, and the margins between a good season and a quiet one are thin.

Where Phelan does show a clear edge is at Windsor, where he's sent out 3 winners from 13 runners. That's nearly 1 in every 4, and in training terms, that's significant. Some trainers just understand certain tracks — the way the ground rides, the pace of the races, the kinds of horses that tend to win there — and Windsor appears to suit how Phelan operates. When his runners turn up there, they're worth paying attention to.

His most reliable jockey partnership is with Paddy Bradley, who has ridden 4 winners from 49 races for the yard — roughly 1 in every 12. That's a meaningful relationship built over nearly 50 races together, and the fact that Phelan keeps putting Bradley up suggests a level of trust that goes beyond the numbers. Interestingly, his pairing with Whiskey Sunrise has yet to produce a win in 7 attempts, which is the kind of stubborn blank that every yard carries — a horse and trainer combination that simply hasn't clicked yet.

At six winners in the current season from 108 runners, Phelan isn't setting the world alight, but four years in, he's still learning what his horses do best and where they win. The Windsor record is a genuine bright spot, and if he can find more tracks and conditions that suit his string, the win rate should follow.