John Joseph Hanlon

Hanlon has trained 57 career winners in total, and over the past 12 months he has sent out 11 winners from 350 runners — which works out at roughly 1 in every 32 races. That is a 3% win rate, and it has slipped slightly from 4% last season, suggesting this has been a tougher year for the yard. To put that in context, a 3% win rate is on the lower end for a professional training operation, so the real story here is not volume — it is that Hanlon has repeatedly delivered when the races matter most.

His most consistent ally in the saddle is jockey Paddy Hanlon, almost certainly a family connection given the shared surname. Together they have produced 8 wins from 147 rides — roughly 1 in every 18, or a 5% win rate — which is meaningfully better than the yard's overall numbers. That suggests they work well as a combination, and when Paddy Hanlon is in the saddle, the team's chances improve noticeably.

One area where the data is clear is ground conditions. On normal ground — the kind of standard going you get on a dry but not baked track — Hanlon's runners have won 7 times from 130 races this season, a 5% win rate. That is a noticeably better return than his overall figures, which hints that his horses genuinely prefer predictable conditions underfoot. When the ground gets unpredictable, either wet and muddy or very firm and fast, his results soften.

Not every partnership catches fire, of course. His three runs alongside No Knee Never have not produced a win yet, though three races is far too small a sample to draw any real conclusions. The bigger picture for Hanlon is that of a trainer still in the early stages of building a yard, but one who has already shown he knows how to prepare a horse for the biggest occasions.