Richard Spencer

The last twelve months have seen Spencer send out 271 runners and come home with 27 winners, which works out at roughly 1 in every 10 — a win rate of 10%. That is a slight step back from the 13% he managed the previous season, and it is worth watching whether that dip is a temporary blip or something the yard needs to address. In a sport where margins are wafer-thin, dropping three percentage points across a full season is noticeable.

One area where Spencer clearly has an edge is when the rain arrives. On wet or muddy ground, his horses have won 3 from 16 races — a 19% win rate, which is nearly double his overall average. That is not a coincidence; that is a trainer who knows how to prepare horses that relish a soft surface, and it is the kind of detail that separates a shrewd yard from the rest of the field.

His most reliable partnership is with jockey George Wood. Across 118 rides together, they have combined for 14 wins — roughly 1 in every 8, or 12% — which edges above the yard's overall average and suggests a genuine working understanding between the two. The outlier in the data is Enter Sandman, a horse Spencer has saddled seven times without a win. Seven races is a decent sample, and at some point that particular partnership will need to find another gear.

Four years in, two top-level wins, and a growing record on testing ground — Spencer is building something worth paying attention to. The slight dip this season aside, the trajectory of a trainer who reaches the highest level this early in their career tends to point in one direction.