Interview with Olly Murphy

Fifth in the overall list in the trainers' championship for the 2025/2026 National Hunt season, only Dan Skelton trained more winners than Olly Murphy in the UK last winter. Gordon Elliott's former assistant sent out a personal best 144 winners earning total prize-money of £1,828,081. Champion and stable jockey Sean Bowen partnered 113 of those winners and the pair have become a potent combination in recent years. On Thursday afternoon, Olly kindly gave up some of his time to run through his ever increasingly powerful string for 2026/2027 for One Jump Ahead readers. With many of his owners increasing their spending power, the stable has been bolstered by the arrival of some hugely exciting prospects from France and Ireland. Olly has broken into the high echelons of the UK training ranks and that trend looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. 

Readers of Ahead On The Flat will be aware that the Ballydoyle Juveniles section has been in good form in recent weeks with Man's Best Friend (11/2) winning the Group 2 Richmond Stakes at Goodwood last week. His stablemate Wall Street (7/1) is also highlighted in the same feature and the Sea The Stars colt made the perfect start to his career by winning the opening one mile maiden at Leopardstown on Thursday. A 1,000,000gns foal, the Aidan O'Brien trained runner responded to pressure before picking up strongly and leading close home. He looks to have a bright future and is one to follow.

As discussed, I am working at Haydock Park on Friday and Saturday and will therefore update the Diary within the next few days. I still have a couple of interviews to conduct for OJA next week to complete the Talking Trainers section.