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THE Arc is over, the rains have arrived, Willie Mullins is hosting media days and the Persian War Hurdle was run at Chepstow yesterday.
Jump racing is about to take centre stage once again and so it’s time to get your head around hundreds of strange new French horse names as you try to remember the name of the yoke that beat Galopin Des Champs in the Gold Cup. I know the way you’re thinking.
A good place to start is to get yourself a copy of Mark Howard’s One Jump Ahead. The author is well-known as a pundit on Racing TV and has been a columnist in The Irish Field in the past. He has been producing horses-to-follow books for the flat and jumps for 32 years now, which is an amazing achievement.
As you would expect, Howard has built up a lot of good contacts in that time and it is clear to the reader that trainers and jockeys trust him with their opinions.
One Jump Ahead runs to well over 200 pages and it includes all sorts of angles, such as insights from James Reveley on French imports, contributions from Declan Phelan on Irish pointers, a piece with Rich Ricci’s racing manager Joe Chambers, plus news of unraced horses to watch out for and those changing codes this winter.
But the most important sections are the trainer interviews and Howard’s own distilled list of 40 horses to follow. All of them have gone straight into my tracker.
Trainers featured include Harry Derham, Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero, Philip Hobbs and Johnson White, Gary and Josh Moore, Olly Murphy, Paul Nicholls, Jonjo and A.J. O’Neill, Ben Pauling, Nicky Richards, Lucinda Russell and Michael Scudamore, Dan Skelton and Jamie Snowden.
The book also includes a comprehensive analysis of the current top hurdlers and chasers over each distance, plus ante-post suggestions.
One Jump Ahead by Mark Howard is priced at £14.99. Overseas buyers will be sent the PDF version. Alternatively, the hard copy can be ordered via Amazon.
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