2023-24 Season Review: where our trainers sit in the Championship

The powerbase of Jump racing does not lie in Gloucestershire. This is the story of the statistics from the most recent Jumps season, dominated by a late surge for the Trainers' Championship by Willie Mullins, following a highly successful Cheltenham Festival and victory in the Grand National. 

Despite some 10% of Jump horses in training located within a 20 mile radius of Cheltenham, trainers in the county muster only two of the top 10 positions, with 2 Irish (Elliott being the other). The old guard, being the Henderson-Nicholls rivalry, have both been undermined by Prince Regent, Dan Skelton, who, in any other year, would have won his first championship. 

The top 12 stables all won earnings in excess of £1m, which tells you as much about the impact of premierization as a cataclysmic change in their strike rates. 

Nigel Twiston-Davies is a bellwether of the Championship. Without the big London money of some of his rivals, he continues to win big handicaps, even if Festival winners are beyond his owners' budgets.

Ben Pauling has emerged as a player following his investment in Naunton Downs which is paying dividends. 

At the bottom of the table, Tom George and Sophie Leech practice a different business model based around satellite stables in France, where a fewer volume of horses can win big prizes relatively easily.