AT the end of the last Irish flat turf season, I looked at how various trainers were doing relative to their figures in the three previous campaigns, with two yards standing out as having down years: Ger Lyons had 40 winners during the 2023 campaign when his previous three-season average was 66.3 winners, while Joseph O’Brien had 79 winners versus a three-season average of 99.3.

Lyons has been back in the groove so far in 2024 turf season. Through the end of June, he has 24 winners whereas that number was just 11 last year, while in 2022 and 2021 those figures were 30 and 35 respectively.