S Woods

The overall record backs that up. Since starting out in 2021, Woods has sent out 121 career winners, and over the last twelve months has kept up a steady pace of 24 winners from 229 runners — that is roughly 1 in every 10, or 10% across the board. In a yard still finding its feet, that kind of consistency is genuinely hard to build. There are plenty of trainers with far longer CVs who would settle for those numbers.

Look closely at where those winners come from, and patterns emerge. On normal ground conditions, Woods is noticeably sharper — 17 wins from 103 races, which works out at 17%, nearly 1 in every 6. That suggests an eye for placing horses in the right conditions rather than simply running them wherever a slot appears. Newcastle is another happy hunting ground: 3 winners from just 10 runners there, a hit rate that any trainer would envy at a track that can be a tough nut to crack.

The best individual partnership in the yard right now is with a horse called Bahadur — three wins together from eight races is a serious record for a trainer-horse combination, and it points to a horse that Woods clearly understands well. Meanwhile, jockey Kieran O'Neill has become the go-to rider for the yard. Six wins from 36 rides together at 17% — roughly 1 in every 6 — makes O'Neill the most productive jockey in the operation, and that kind of stable alliance tends to get stronger the longer it runs.

Four years in, two top-level wins banked, and a yard with a clear identity taking shape — S Woods is one of the more interesting stories in British training right now, and it would be no surprise to see the winners column keep climbing.