Graeme Rodway is hoping his list of bonus hopefuls can avoid illness and injury

Finding the winners of the 25 bonus races is key to winning the Tote Ten To Follow and it pays to pick your list accordingly. Try to cover as many of those as you can with your ten.

The Betfair Chase is the first of them and last year’s winner Lostintranslationmust be included. He could easily repeat that victory and I’m fairly certain he wasn’t at his peak for the Gold Cup at Cheltenham last season, so it was a superb effort to finish third. He might go two better this time and there is a chance he will take in the King George at Kempton too.

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The Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury comes up next and I was quite taken with Black Op on his reappearance at Carlisle. He will improve for the run and the step up in trip should suit. His jumping appears slicker than earlier in his chase career and he could bag a big prize.

Defi Du Seuil was the outstanding two-mile chaser of last season and he can be forgiven a disappointing run in the Champion Chase at Cheltenham. I expect he will dominate the division in Britain again and the Tingle Creek is the first of a few bonus races he can win.

It’s too early for a Welsh Grand National fancy, so let’s skip that and move on to the big Irish races. There are plenty of bonus points on offer at Leopardstown’s Christmas festival.

Delta Work won the Savills Chase and the Irish Gold Cup at the Dublin track last season and that was after a disappointing run at Down Royal first time up. Deja vu anyone?

Abacadabras was also below form at Down Royal, but that small-field race wouldn’t have played to his strengths and he may be the best hurdler in Ireland come the end of the season.

As far as British hurdlers go, it might be worth sticking with Goshen. He has disappointed on the Flat this year but was never a superstar in that discipline and is likely to bounce back when returned to hurdles.

Goshen was in the process of hacking up in the Triumph Hurdle last season when falling at the last and that race has thrown up subsequent winners.

There are plenty of points on offer for novice chasers, so don’t pass up the opportunity of easy pickings for Envoi Allen and Shishkin. Envoi Allen looks likely to win everything he turns up for and Supreme winner Shishkin will be a top-class chaser if he jumps soundly.

That covers the majority of the bonus races and we have two spaces left to split between either a handicap chaser who specialises in marathons, a top-class 2m4f chaser who could win the Ryanair and Melling, or a Stayers’ Hurdle contender. It’s two from those three.

At this stage it’s unlikely we are going to pick the Grand National winner, so let’s play it safer and go with Rouge Vif. He was impressive at Cheltenham first time out and could end up in the Ryanair Chase. His trainer did a similar thing with last season's runner-up Saint Calvados.

Sire Du Berlais is my Stayers’ Hurdle horse. He ran a massive race to win the Pertemps for a second year in a row off a big weight at Cheltenham last season and is up to winning Grade 1s.

That completes the ten, so all that’s left to do now is sit back and watch them rack up the points.

Well that’s in a perfect world. In reality it will probably be more a case of waking up each morning and hoping your ten isn’t slowly whittled down by illness and injury. But at least there is a substitution window from March 10-14 if things do go south.