Tote 10 To Follow: Donn McClean Marks Your Card For The Jumps Season
The Tote Ten To Follow competition is always worth a go. It’s Fantasy Football for racing with one of the best horse racing betting sites, only you choose the team at the start of the season that has to last you all the way through to near the end of the season.
There is one transfer window, and that comes up just before Cheltenham. It would be like having Rodri as the cornerstone of your starting X and not being able to transfer him until March.
It's different to Fantasy Football though, because it’s all about the bonus races. There are 21 races run throughout the season, from November to April, the winners of which are awarded bonus points. Get them right and you are on your way.
Bonus Races Vital To Victory Chances
The trouble is that there are 21 bonus races, and you can only choose 10 horses, so you have to cut your cloth.
There are some bonus races in which there are too many unknowns at this stage. The Grand National is one of those races, the Betfair Hurdle is another, the Welsh Grand National is another.
If you happen to have a Grand National contender that you put in as a potential Gold Cup horse, well and good, but you probably shouldn’t be using up an entry on a horse whose primary target for the season is the Grand National.
If you need to, you have the option of finding space for Iroko, Intense Raffles and I Am Maximus in the bonus window.
Bonus Races 2024/25
- Betfair Chase (Haydock)
- Coral Gold Cup (Newbury)
- Tingle Creek Chase (Sandown)
- King George VI Chase (Kempton)
- Welsh Grand National (Chepstow)
- Savills Chase (Leopardstown)
- Irish Champion Hurdle (Leopardstown)
- Irish Gold Cup (Leopardstown)
- Betfair Hurdle (Newbury)
- Arkle Chase (Cheltenham)
- Champion Hurdle (Cheltenham)
- Queen Mother Champion Chase (Cheltenham)
- Brown Advisory Chase (formerly the RSA Chase) (Cheltenham)
- Stayers’ Hurdle (Cheltenham),
- Ryanair Chase (Cheltenham)
- Gold Cup (Cheltenham)
- Betway Bowl (Aintree)
- Aintree Hurdle (Aintree)
- Melling Chase (Aintree)
- Liverpool Stayers’ Hurdle (Aintree)
- Grand National (Aintree)
That leaves 18 bonus races that you can target. Of those, there is a significant leaning towards staying chases.
Seven of those 18 races are staying chases, six of them Grade 1 chases: the Betfair Chase, the King George, the Savills Chase, the Irish Gold Cup, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Aintree Bowl.
And one of them the Coral Gold Cup, from which the winner can often progress to be a Grade 1 staying chaser.
You also have the added bonus that, as above, one or two of them could go on to contest the Grand National, so you have to weigh your entry heavily in favour of staying chasers.
Two of the bonus races are for the championship two-mile hurdlers, the Irish Champion Hurdle and the Champion Hurdle, three if you include the Aintree Hurdle over two and a half miles, and two are for the staying hurdlers, the Stayers’ Hurdle and the Liverpool Hurdle.
You can shoehorn the Aintree Hurdle into the staying hurdlers’ category if you want, but you probably shouldn't, as it is more often a two-mile hurdler who steps up in trip to win the Aintree Hurdle than it is a three-mile hurdler who steps down – Solwhit notwithstanding – if it isn’t a specialist two-and-a-half-miler.
Two of the bonus races, the Tingle Creek Chase and the Champion Chase, are for the championship two-mile chasers, and that is often not a very deep division, and two are for two-and-a-half-mile chasers, the Ryanair Chase and the Melling Chase.
That leaves the novice chases, the Arkle over two miles and the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase over three.
Play The Percentage Game
So, breaking it into percentages, about 39% of the ‘targetable’ bonus races are for staying chasers, so it makes sense that around 39% of your entry should be made up of staying chasers, or four entries.
Keep in mind that your objective is to give yourself the best possible chance of accumulating as many points as you can across all the bonus races.
Around 17% of the bonus races are made up of two-to-two-and-a-half-mile hurdlers, so that’s either one or two entries for the championship hurdlers.
Staying hurdlers, two-mile chasers and two-and-a-half-mile chasers make up 11% each, so that’s one entry for each of those categories.
Additionally, 6% of the bonus races are for two-mile novice chasers (the Arkle) and another 6% are for staying novice chasers (the Brown Advisory Chase), so they each get either one entry or no entries.
Obvious Picks Key To Winning Formula
The other thing to keep in mind about the Ten To Follow competition is that it often pays to stick to the obvious.
Of course, if you are going to win it, you have to find points of differentiation, but if you try to be too clever, you could be left out of your ground very quickly.
For example, if you decide to leave out Constitution Hill, because he is in 65% of the entries, you could be in trouble by the end of November.
Looking back on last year’s competition, among the top 10 point-scorers were the Gold Cup winner, the Champion Hurdle winner, the Champion Chase winner, the Stayers’ Hurdle winner, the Tingle Creek winner, the Arkle winner and the Brown Advisory Chase winner.
If you can get close to finding the winners of those seven races, then you are well on your way.
Don't Miss Friday Deadline
It costs just £5/€5.50 per stable to play in the paid version or you can even enter a separate competition for free, but make sure you pick your 10 to follow before the deadline of 11am on Friday, November 15.
There is a minimum £100,000 prize pool for the top 10, but the more that play, the bigger the pot.
The overall winner is guaranteed £54,000, and there are monthly prizes too until the competition ends at the Aintree meeting on April 5 next year.
Donn McClean's 10 To Follow Jumps Season 2024/25
You can read more about the way the competition works with Gambling.com's guide to the Tote's Ten to Follow, but without further ado, here are my picks for the season:
Galopin Des Champs (Fr) - Age: 8, Trainer: Willie Mullins
The first of your four staying chasers has to be Galopin Des Champs, the dual Gold Cup hero and ante post favourite to complete the hat-trick this season.
He could win the John Durkan Chase and/or the Savills Chase (like he did last year) and/or the Irish Gold Cup (like he did last year) on the way.
Fact To File (Fr) - Age: 7, Trainer: Willie Mullins
Number two is Fact To File, last year’s leading staying novice chaser and still only seven, still with only four runs over fences on his CV.
He could improve again this season, and all those top staying chases are open to him too.
Grey Dawning (Ire) - Age: 7, Trainer: Dan Skelton
He could go off at a very short price with betting apps for the Betfair Chase, the first of the bonus races, and he could be a player too in the King George, as well as in the Gold Cup.
Monty’s Star (Ire) - Age: 7, Trainer: Henry De Bromhead
He has a little bit to find on Fact To File on their running in the Brown Advisory Chase last March, but he should improve for greater stamina tests this season.
Monty's Star is another who could make the requisite improvement this season to take his place in all the top staying chases.
Constitution Hill (GB) - Age: 7, Trainer: Nicky Henderson
Constitution Hill must be on your list. He is reportedly very well and on track for the Fighting Fifth Hurdle.
Then, all going well, he will take in the Christmas Hurdle and the Champion Hurdle - and there is every chance that he will win the Aintree Hurdle too.
That’s two bonus races and two other Grade 1s which can produce a lot of points.
You could add State Man or Lossiemouth as your second two-mile hurdler. There are lots of points to be won in the Grade 1 hurdles in Ireland, but we need that extra entry.
Teahupoo (Fr) - Age: 7, Trainer: Gordon Elliott
Staying hurdler? Teahupoo, easy. He is the most likely winner of the Stayers’ Hurdle at this stage by some way, and he will probably be a short price with betting sites for the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle in three weeks’ time.
Jonbon (Fr) - Age: 8, Trainer: Nicky Henderson
Your two-mile chaser has to be Jonbon. He missed the Champion Chase last year, but that wasn’t his fault, and he won the Shloer Chase and the Tingle Creek Chase before Christmas last year. He could do something similar this year.
Also, he proved that he could stay two and a half miles last April when he won the Melling Chase, another bonus race, and that race will probably be on his radar again this year, however his season plays out between now and then.
Il Etait Temps (Fr) - Age: 6, Trainer: Willie Mullins
This two-and-a-half-mile chaser is a little bit of a wild card. It was a close call between him and Banbridge, and it may be that Il Etait Temps isn’t as good at Cheltenham as he is at other tracks, but he is only six and he has raced just six times over fences.
He could improve again this season. He could start off in the John Durkan Chase, and then step up in trip for the King George.
After that, he could be a Ryanair Chase horse. He is often an underrated horse.
Inthepocket (GB) - Age: 7, Trainer: Henry De Bromhead
I'll pick Inthepocket as your two-mile novice chaser and Ballyburn as your staying novice chaser.
Ballyburn (Ire) - Age: 6, Trainer: Willie Mullins
We’re still not sure what route Ballyburn is going to take, and he holds entries in the Morgiana Hurdle and in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle, but it might be prudent to find a space for him somewhere in your list, and that’s as good a space as any at this stage!
The more people that play the bigger the prizes, so try your luck with this fantastic season-long competition and get your entries in before 11am on Friday, November 15.
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