Northern Ireland handler Michael Taggart is enjoying one of the stronger three-month runs of any trainer on the site right now. From 27 runners he has landed 9 winners, a strike rate of 33.3 per cent, with a further 5 seconds taking his combined win-and-place figure north of 50 per cent. For a trainer sending out that volume of runners, hitting a third of them as winners is a genuinely strong return, and it points to a yard that is placing its dogs well rather than simply hoping for the best.
What tends to separate trainers on a run like this is consistency of conditions. A yard in form is usually one that has found a groove with a particular track, trip or grade and is repeating the trick rather than chasing results all over the map. Taggart has two runners out today that will test whether the purple patch continues. Francisco Bay goes in the A1 at Shelbourne Park over 525m at 21:12 from trap 4, a step up in company that will properly examine whether the recent scoring reflects genuine improvement or just favourable opposition. Blackstone Flash has an easier assignment on paper, in the A4 at the same track over the same trip at 19:42, drawn in trap 3.
Neither run is a certainty, and a trainer's form figure is a rear-view mirror rather than a guarantee of what happens next. But when a yard is winning a third of its races over a meaningful sample, it is worth paying attention to what they send out, and today gives two chances to see whether the Taggart string keeps rolling.