Well most of them, anyway...
SHISHKIN - Must have missed him last season!🙄
EPATANTE - Who she?! 🤷♂️
FERNY HOLLOW - Did he win anything of note? Never noticed...🤔
ENVOI ALLEN - Not familiar with him, thanks...👍
Yep it's that time of the year again. The time when your in-boxes are swamped with 'to follow' lists after 'to follow' lists...after 'to follow' lists!!
Which means, as always...
❌NO Nicholls ❌NO Mullins
❌NO Henderson ❌NO Elliott
Yet again I've tried to take a slightly different tack to most of the other 'to follow' lists out there and delved a bit deeper into the training ranks, looking past the obvious quartet of Mullins, Henderson, Nicholls and Elliott...
Look, we all know EPATANTE, FERNY HOLLOW, SHISHKIN, ENVOI ALLEN and co will win their fair share of races this term. You don't need me to tell you that and I don't need to insult you by telling you that (I'll leave that up to the mainstream pundits!!).
And don't get me wrong, there is a time and place to discuss those runners, naturally they will come under discussion as the season progresses, they will be hard to ignore, I'll probably discuss them plenty myself in the NTF Members Area and on the Free NTF blog...and I'm not for one second knocking those that include the 'big names' on their own list...it's just not how I want to play such
things...
Personally I'm much more interested in looking for the runners that have skimmed under the radar a touch, the ones that are not talked about on a regular basis and don't already have a high profile win on their CV.
All of the horses on the list were noted by me at some stage last season. For varying reasons they made my notebook as ones to look out for in coming seasons.
None of it is based on hearsay or stable whispers. I don't go in for that. I back my own judgement and my own views. It's how I like it. It's what I know works.
As already mentioned each of them were noted by me at some stage last season. They caught my eye on at least one occasion and from there I filed them away in my notebook and then re-watched ALL of their previous runs over the summer so I could form a stronger picture of their abilities and likely future targets/plans.
The 'Alternative 20 to follow' is the fruits of that labour...
Do I 'expect' EVERY horse on this list to win this season? No, not at all. I'd love it if they did and I think they all definitely have the 'potential' to be winning this season...but given the type of list it is I'm more than prepared for a few of them to run the odd 'clunker' here and there...that's racing for you, it is rarely a smooth upward curve of a graph...
Happy punting, and if for any reason you can't grab the guide from one of the links above, the 'pure' link is at the bottom of this mail...
Cheers
Ben (NTF)
Thanks for being a loyal NTF reader
