Tracey Collins

The most striking of those patterns is her relationship with Dundalk. All four of her winners in the past 12 months have come at that track — 4 wins from 16 runners there, meaning she wins 1 in every 4 races she contests at the venue. For a trainer still in the early years of her career, that kind of dominance at a specific track is genuinely unusual. It suggests she knows exactly how to prepare a horse for Dundalk's particular demands, and that is a real skill. Yards far bigger and longer-established than hers would envy that kind of record at a single course.

She also shows a clear preference for normal ground conditions — the kind of surface that suits a wide range of horses. On a standard track, she wins 1 in every 4 races (4 from 16), which is a strong return and points to a trainer who targets her runners carefully rather than simply running them wherever there's a race available.

The partnership that best illustrates Collins's eye for placing a horse is the one she has built with Buddy Batt. Together they have won 3 of their 6 races — exactly half — which is a remarkable ratio and the sort of combination that punters and fellow trainers notice. When you find a horse that suits your methods, three wins from six attempts is not luck; it is horsemanship.

At four years in, Collins is still considered a young trainer by the standards of a sport where experience is everything. But the concentration of her winners — one track, one set of ground conditions, one standout horse — suggests someone who has already figured out where her strengths lie and is smart enough to play to them. That kind of self-awareness tends to compound over time.