This is a free sample of Paul Kealy's Betting World, part of our Ultimate Daily newsletter service for , who receive a different weekly email every evening at 6pm. Subscribers can get fantastic insight from the likes of Kealy, Lee Mottershead, and Tom Segal every week – plus our regional correspondents provide the latest from their areas. Those who aren't yet signed up for The Ultimate Daily should click here to sign up and start receiving emails immediately! Not a Racing Post+ subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive The Front Runner five mornings a week plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content. It seems customary at the end of any season to dish out awards and I think there has been an absolute standout trainer over jumps – and it's not Willie Mullins, nor Dan Skelton. Let's face it, Mullins has the most powerful owners and the most powerful string of horses any trainer has ever assembled and we've come to expect nothing else but perfection. If he has fewer than eight winners at the Cheltenham Festival (he had ten but failed to win any of the big four) we'd be calling him a disappointment. He's always going to win the most money in Ireland and, when he puts his mind to it, he's going to do the same in Britain – it's nothing new for him. Skelton fought valiantly for his first British title and came up just short again, but he did so with by far the biggest string of horses in Britain and a smattering of top-class ones as well. He's going to win the title soon and deserves to do so, but you can hardly claim he punched above his weight considering he ran some 255 individual horses over the season. No, the trainer who was statistically best in Britain last season was Olly Murphy – and he was so by a mile if you forget about prize-money. Olly Murphy: enjoyed a terrific season Credit: Caroline Norris The lack of top-class horses has kept Murphy away from the majority of big prizes all season, but you can only go to war with what you've got in your yard. The really good horses place themselves, but the others need a proper plan, and nobody has been better at planning in the past season than Murphy. It's true he has a big string, but his strike-rate of 25 per cent over the whole season is up there with the likes of Paul Nicholls (once had 27) and Nicky Henderson in their pomp and is way better than anyone else in the top 50 in the overall standings. He had a breakthrough season in 2023-24 when saddling 100 winners for the first time since starting training in 2017 (finished with 102), but he blew that right out of the water with 141 this time. Yes, that put him 38 winners behind Dan Skelton in the total wins list (42 ahead of the next best), but it was achieved from a massive 426 fewer runs. He's also had a higher proportion of happy owners in the past season than anyone else with a decent-sized string as 56 per cent of his individual runners managed to win a race. That's compared to 46 per cent for Skelton, 44 per cent for Nicholls and just 38 per cent for Henderson. Olly Murphy teamed up with champion jockey Sean Bowen to win the bet365 Gold Cup with Resplendent Grey (nearside) at Sandown Credit: Edward Whitaker Murphy also managed to turn a profit for punters, with a blind bet on all of his horses returning a profit of £58.74 to a £1 level stake even though champion jockey Sean Bowen, as popular as any jockey in Britain right now, rode the majority of his horses. The big wins have been few and far between, but Murphy and Bowen teamed up for success in the bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown on Saturday with Resplendent Grey and I can't think of a duo that deserved it more. Having one of the best jockeys around is undoubtedly a bonus for Murphy, but he has, remember, been training for only eight full seasons, which is four fewer than Skelton, and his progress up the ranks has been remarkable. If he gets a few owners prepared to compete at the top table for the quality horses - and that is the hard part for everyone in Britain these days, although knowing Bowen will ride them might be tempting for some – Murphy is going to be making further inroads on the established big guns. By that, I mean big guns in terms of prize-money won. Murphy is already a big gun in Britain by any other metric. Not a Racing Post+ subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive our Ultimate Daily emails plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content. Read these next: Olly Murphy: 'We've both got a massive drive - I want to climb the trainers' table and help Sean retain the jockeys' title' Champion Sean Bowen and Olly Murphy hit rivals for six with four-timers apiece at Perth 'I'm very proud of everything he's done' - Olly Murphy heaps more praise on red-hot Sean Bowen after 127-1 Perth treble