Stuart Edmunds

This season, his runners have won 24 races from 172 attempts, which works out at roughly 1 in every 7 — a 14% win rate that sits comfortably above what many established yards manage. The most telling number, though, is Fakenham. Six winners from just 14 runners at that tight, quirky Norfolk track means he's winning there almost every other time he turns up. That kind of dominance at a specific venue usually means a trainer understands exactly what it takes to win there — the track, the ground, the type of horse that thrives on it. It's the sort of detail that sharp racegoers file away.

His most reliable partnership is with jockey Charlie Hammond, who has ridden 131 times for Edmunds and converted 21 of those into wins — roughly 1 in every 6 rides, a 16% win rate that suggests a real working understanding between the two. When a trainer keeps putting the same jockey up, and that jockey keeps delivering, it's usually because they read races in the same way.

Then there's Innisfree Lass, a horse Edmunds has run 22 times, winning together on 3 occasions. Three from twenty-two might not sound like a lot, but keeping a horse in training long enough to build that kind of shared history — and placing her well enough to win at all — is part of the craft. Not every horse in a yard is a star, and knowing how to get the best out of the ones that aren't is what separates a decent trainer from a good one. On the current evidence, Edmunds looks firmly like the latter.