Eamonn Francis Gallagher

His overall numbers are modest for now — 2 winners from 29 runners this season, which works out at roughly 1 in every 14 races — and that is not unusual for a small yard still finding its feet. Building a training operation from scratch takes time, and the coaches who eventually make their mark are rarely the ones who burst out of the gate with huge numbers. They are the ones who learn their horses.

His most telling statistic is on wet ground. When the rain has been down and the ground is soft and testing, Gallagher's runners have won 1 from 3, a 33% win rate that puts him well ahead of most trainers in those conditions. That is not a fluke — soft ground tends to suit specific types of horse, and a trainer who can identify that early and place his horses accordingly is already thinking in the right way.

The horse to watch from his yard is God Help Us, with whom Gallagher has built a nine-race partnership. One win from those nine outings together might not sound dramatic, but the fact that they keep coming back to each other tells its own story. That kind of long-term relationship between a trainer and a particular horse is often where the breakthroughs happen — the trainer learns every quirk, every preference, every condition that brings out the best, and eventually it clicks. Whether God Help Us is the horse that puts Gallagher's name on the map remains to be seen, but the partnership is worth keeping an eye on, especially when the ground comes up soft.