Jim & Suzi Best

This season tells a mixed story. The pair have sent out 13 winners from 163 runners, which works out at roughly 1 in every 13 races — an 8% win rate that represents a dip from the 11% they posted last year. That kind of drop is worth watching but not panicking over. Training is a numbers game shaped by the horses available, and a yard this young is still assembling the quality needed to push those figures back upward. What it does mean is that when their horses do win, it tends to matter.

One area where the yard genuinely shines is in normal ground conditions. On a standard, neither-wet-nor-dry track, they have won 5 races from 31 — a 16% win rate, or roughly 1 in every 6. That is almost double their overall average, and it suggests the horses Jim and Suzi Best prefer to train — or the ones they have available — really do perform best when the ground is fair. It is the kind of stat that a shrewd punter would circle in red.

Their standout horse at the moment is Golden Circet, who has won 2 of 18 races in partnership with the yard. Two from eighteen might not sound dramatic, but in a sport where finding a reliable performer is genuinely difficult, a horse that keeps showing up and delivering is worth its weight. Their most regular jockey, Luke Morris, has partnered their horses 24 times this season for 1 win — a 4% win rate that suggests the combination is still searching for its best form together, or simply that the horses Morris rides for them are not yet the pick of the string.

Three years in, Jim and Suzi Best are doing what most young training partnerships have to do: accumulate experience, learn which horses they do best with, and wait for the talent to arrive. The numbers are honest rather than spectacular, but the trajectory is there — and a yard that wins 1 in 6 on the right ground already knows something useful about itself.