D K Weld

The most recent twelve months have produced 29 winners from 251 runners — that is roughly 1 in every 9 races, or a 12% win rate. In a sport where most trainers are delighted with anything above 10%, that is a solid return, though what makes it more meaningful is the quality of those wins. The Ascot victory came in June 2023, the Epsom success in May 2024 — two of the sport's grandest stages, delivered a year apart.

The engine room of the operation is the partnership with jockey Chris Hayes, which has produced 25 wins from 182 rides together — around 1 in every 7, a 14% win rate that nudges comfortably ahead of the yard's overall average. That kind of consistency across nearly two hundred rides is not luck; it suggests a working relationship built on understanding and trust. Cork, meanwhile, has been a particularly fruitful track, with 4 winners from just 11 runners — more than 1 in every 3, which is a remarkable conversion rate at any venue.

One partnership that has not clicked yet is with Wild Sapphire — four races together and no wins. That happens in racing; not every combination finds its rhythm, and four races is still a small sample. Whether that changes remains to be seen, but it stands out as the one thread in an otherwise tidy picture.

What is genuinely striking about D K Weld's story is the speed of it. Two top-level wins at Ascot and Epsom in four years of training suggests someone who is not content to build gradually from the bottom — this is a yard that has announced itself at the very highest level, and done so quickly.