Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 22 December 2025

I’ve said before that if I were to single out just one leading principle to making a profit from backing horses it would be to monitor stable form.

It’s quite extraordinary how things can go well for one yard and so badly for another. There have been many reasons put forward for this … the quality of the horses being the most obvious, but the overall health of the string can be a factor. Inclement weather in the local area can play a part, while if a yard has a couple of good horses they can bring their stablemates on.

This season we have had Jonjo O’Neill take the drastic step of closing his yard down and not running a horse for three weeks. He’s back amongst the winners now and has 18 entries on Boxing Day.

A lot of us were waiting for Venetia Williams to strike form in November when the ground softened, but it didn’t happen and with just seven winners so far this season it appears that she may be lacking the quality of stock to work with.

In Ireland Gavin Cromwell went through a barren spell but his horses are now running better and he landed a very canny touch on the Flat with the two-year-old debutante filly Camino Vino at Dundalk last week, backed from about 40 on Betfair and from 9/1 on course down to a starting price of 9/4.

By contrast Willie Mullins is relatively quiet by his customary high standards, with just three winners from his last 44 runners at the time of writing. That will soon change though, with his horses appearing to have needed a run this season.

It will be interesting to see which yards do well over the Christmas and New Year programme of racing.

Bye for now

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