As the month of August draws to a close, we are now within a few weeks of the start of another National Hunt season in the UK and Ireland. In recent years, it would probably be fairer to say that the Jumps season, or certainly the focus on it, never really goes away. However, whilst the Flat racing has been taking centre stage, I have been spending as many hours as I can spare on this year's French recruits list, which is available to download below as a PDF file. I don't intend to use this particular blog post to discuss any of the horses directly and especially not to speculate about their current level of form and what they might achieve. Instead this is a simple post with this year's list, although I would like to add a couple of personal "thank-you's" to a couple of people who have been an immense help. Finding these horses is never an easy task and it requires an enormous amount of patience and research and even at the time of writing, with the largest list that I have ever compiled, there are still several horses that I have not been able to locate. It is a little astonishing to think that in 2024, we are unable to get the various Racing authorities to share information about the horses that are imported each year. This type of system is operated by the Jockey Club in Hong Kong in a wonderfully efficient manner, so it can be done. However, until it is, the French Recruits can only be tracked in the current manner and so I must pass special thanks to both Ben Payne (@benpayne3) and the superb @RoadCheltenham, who have both saved me many hours this year with their outstanding knowledge of the National Hunt yards.
This PDF is free to download and only contains horses that I have been able to confirm through multiple sources. I have also added links to each of the horses profile pages with France Galop, so that you can use this to view the form and replays if you wish.
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