Martin Dixon guides Oli Bell through The Horse Watchers and Rod In Pickle teams for 2020

Can you explain a little in terms of your methodology, what your targets are and how you go about trying to source the right kind of horses?

I think the most important thing to start with on this is that our primary skill-set is on race reading and analysing the form book. So the majority of our horses up to now - we are, admittedly, dabbling into a couple of unraced ones based on pedigree analysis - are based on the form and our reading of that. That is the strong point of all of us who are involved in the ownership.

So there's a pretty thorough vetting process as far as that is concerned, which whittles down the sales catalogues. Watching video replays, primarily, making lots of notes on those videos and then collaborating between us to come to a collective decision on the ones that we have positives on and see potential in - from a handicap perspective.

We want to buy horses that we think have improvement in them, rather than just horses that might do us a job and win us a race here or there. We want to get horses that are well handicapped and that's what we're looking for in the main.

We do a lot of pedigree work as well, in line with what we're seeing on race replays, and then when we get to the sale we rely on our trainers to do the physical aspect of things when we're there.

So it's a big team effort and a lot of time goes into the catalogues as soon as they come out, to start trying to draw up a shortlist and come up with the horses we see as having potential for purchase.

Mick Appleby has done a remarkable job for us in getting horses to fulfill their potential as well. He's a brilliant trainer.

A couple have been sold during the winter - are you always happy to move them on again at the right price?

We're always buying with a view to sell at a later stage to keep the whole model rolling. It would be very hard for us to do what we do otherwise.

The likes of Mithqaal was sold to the US and won four races over in America and Future Score was sold to Australia after his debut win for us and has amassed over 250,000 dollars Down Under.

It's important to us that we sell horses who have gone on to be successful elsewhere, as well as for us.

Major success stories for The Horse Watchers

• 49 winners from 256 runners since inception in 2015
• 20 of the 24 horses involved have won races
• Big Country - BHA rating 75>>>109
• Mithqaal - BHA rating 71>>>93
• Hakam - BHA rating 81>>>Group 3 winner in Norway
• Pearl Nation - BHA rating 74>>>104

Will Alistair Rawlinson still be your main man in the saddle when the 2020 Flat season finally gets going?

Absolutely, Ali will be riding all of our horses at Mick's as and when he is available. He's been a big part of the team and the yard's success so getting to know the horses at home is a big advantage in our eyes.

And he's build up a very good record for us in recent season.

So, could you guide us through the horses you're most looking forward to running this year?

The Horse Watchers

BULLDOZER

The story with him is that we took Big Country and Hakam over to Norway and caused a 33/1 upset with Hakam in the Group 3 sprint in August 2018 - it was at the same time the Doncaster yearling sales were on and we had a catalogue with us for some reason which probably proved to be a costly mistake as we had a few drinks in the airport bar on the way home and ended up landing in Manchester and buying Bulldozer as a yearling for 26,000.

He ran three times as a two-year-old and showed absolutely nothing, he was very backward and very, very green. He's now been gelded and has got a low handicap mark, we think he'll stay and hopefully improve further for being gelded going into handicap company.

But he'll need to improve a lot on what he showed and in truth it was probably a valuable lesson to not go and splash unnecessary cash in high spirits on the back of a big win!

GARSMAN

He's quite an exciting young sprinter. We picked him up for 15,000 guineas at the autumn sales last year and he's already won both of his starts for us.

First up at Southwell we were expecting him to need the run a bit based on his homework but he seems to come to life on the track. Ali has done an excellent job with this horse as he's brought him on in leaps and bounds.

He went on to win a handicap at Chelmsford under Adam Kirby when Ali was unavailable, it was six furlongs that day and he was clinging on a bit at the finish. We think he's an out-and-out sprinter and have no hesitation at all going back to five furlongs, he's all speed.

We expect him to be fine on the grass and fine on soft ground too as there's a lot of soft turf performers in his family - that could trigger further improvement. We potentially anticipate quite a bit of further improvement as he's from a family of good sprint handicappers on the turf.

KASBAAN

He's the highest rated horse we've got in our ownership now having sold a couple of others off. He was bought last July and won his first two starts for us, which were in quick succession at Kempton including the London Mile Final.

We might well target him at the same race again this year, it's a valuable handicap in the early-autumn and give his effectiveness there it would be a good target. He's just having a little break at the moment after we kept him on the go and he's lost his form a bit.

He's edging back down to what is a very fair mark and hopefully the break will do him some good. He'll come back a well-handicapped horse on his best form and I'm sure Mick will get him back to mix it in some good handicap races.

MALIKA I JAHAN

She's a new horse to us that we picked up at Ascot in November. It must have been a pretty quiet sale as we actually went there with 30,000 to spend on her and we picked her up for 12,000 pounds so it feels like we've already had a bit of a touch with her.

She's a well-bred daughter of Australia, she is a half-sister to numerous multiple winners - it's basically a good family all round and we liked that aspect of things. We also liked the way she shaped on her debut run as a two-year-old.

It was her only run at two and she then had a long time off the track but we (ownership) all had positive comments from the time and it was a red-hot race at Newmarket that worked out well.

She came back last year and was running over a mile and a quarter on the all-weather, it might have stretched her but she might not have been quite ready at the time, but she was a filly when we saw her that might benefit from more time and another winter on her back strengthening up.

She's very lightly raced and, like I say, she's well bred and we think she's just the type of filly Mick will get the most out of it. So we're very hopeful there could be some mileage in her rating of 72.

Ultimately our aim would be to try and get her up towards some black type races, it's a long way off but if we can do with her what we've done with some of the geldings we've bought previously and improve her 20lb or so then she will be getting towards that kind of race potentially. With her pedigree in mind that would be a goal but we'll initially start to try and win a little handicap somewhere and get her progressing.

MERRYWEATHER

She's a really genuine filly by the Melbourne Cup winner Dunaden. We bought her with the anticipation she would progress with age and distance, but she's a little more forward than we imagined when we got her initially and we did keep going with her through the winter.

She won her first three start for us, once at Lingfield then two at Southwell, then we took her over to France for a Listed race in early-March just before racing got shut down. She made quite a lot of the running and was still in there pitching for a place and she got badly hampered as the winner made his move and she lost any chance of making the frame.

So we'll look forward to getting her back on track, she's fine and been training well. She'll be ready as soon as racing resumes and we'll probably look for a fillies' Listed race to get some black type or potentially another fillies' handicap as we do still think there's mileage in her mark, especially given how genuine she is. She tries extremely hard and is a tough filly to pass in the finish.

We expect she'll stay a mile and a half and we've not tried that yet but it leaves us with potential for further improvement.

PERUVIAN LILY

She was bought very cheaply in Ireland and we did initially have an all-weather campaign in mind. She started out on it and ran a couple of times including when she thought she'd run very well at Chelmsford as her homework had been very good in the context of her BHA rating at the time.

But she was hanging quite badly left all the way around and she did exactly the same at Wolverhampton the next time when we ran her again a few days later. So we ran her twice quickly but she came back from Wolverhampton and Mick wasn't happy with her - she wasn't moving right - and we think that there was probably an underlying problem that was causing her to hang and as such not show her full potential on the track.

But we chucked her out in a field and gave her time to come right. She'll be back probably more towards the autumn time so we'll give her plenty of time but she's down to a rating of 66 and at best she was rated 83 in Ireland so she's already become well handicapped. And her homework was suggesting that she's better than a 66 horse so fingers crossed the time off the track will bring her back to life. She could be a filly to follow in the second half of the year.

STONE MASON

He's one of our new ones who hasn't run for us yet. We bought him at Doncaster in September last year, he's a great big giant of a horse by Pivotal and he's probably not been the easiest horse to train. He didn't race as a two-year-old and he was big and backwards when we bought him as a three-year-old but that's one of the things we liked about him as we were willing to turn him away immediately and just give him time that he needed to really mature and come to himself.

We do expect him to be a fair bit better as a four-year-old - Pivotals do tend to get better with age - and given his physique he is a horse we expect to have done extremely well from three to four.

He's only got a handicap rating of 63 - on his only handicap start so far he ran in a very warm race at Newbury and might have been stretched by the mile and a quarter but it was a really good race anyway. We liked the way that he shaped and also liked a couple of his other runs too, including on his debut when trading at a short price in running.

He tanked to the top of the straight there and didn't quite finish his race off again there but we're just hoping that with more maturity and further strengthening up that he'll have done through the winter can help him start to finish off his races better. We might even drop him back a little bit in trip and see where we go from there.

Rod In Pickle Partnership

BEDTIME BELLA

She was on the go through the winter after we bought her last July and she won three races for us and Mick. She's been a good, hardy little filly with a great attitude and wins her share of prize money.

She's a pleasure to own and is very effective on testing ground on the grass. So in an ideal world we'd be running her over seven furlongs on soft ground and she does like an uphill finish as well.

She's a little bit one-paced but does try very hard and seems to quicken a little bit better than others when she's got testing ground. So far opportunities on such ground have been quite limited but she's on a handicap mark she's well capable of winning off.

DREAM WORLD

She's with Mick and is a filly we bought last February, quite cheaply over in Ireland. She won three handicaps for us after she came across and she's back on a winning handicap mark.

She lost her form a little bit in the autumn but she's well capable of winning off marks in the low 70s. Ideal for her is six or seven furlongs on a straight track when they go a good gallop. She's quite big and seems a little bit awkward when she races around a bend.

The break she's been on through the winter should have done her the world of good.

FLAMARRION

He's unraced and with David O'Meara, he was bought out of John Gosden's. He's a Sea The Moon half-brother to, among others, Fun Mac who was a very good stayer for Hughie Morrison.

We bought this horse primarily for a bumper as he was a weak-looking horse as a three-year-old which is probably why he never made it to the track for John Gosden, and also why we've given him plenty of time to come to himself.

We felt bumpers as a four-year-old may be a good plan for him with the stamina in his pedigree in mind. Sea The Moon obviously went on to sire a Grade 1-winning juvenile hurdler in Allmankind in his first crop of juvenile hurdlers last season so that was a positive sign for us.

We'll look forward to running him in September or October time, as yet he's not really done any work.

UNNAMED COLT

We own 50% of him and he's also with David O'Meara. He's a Dandy Man colt out of a mare called Be My Queen who was a Ballydoyle mare from a good family. This horse we bought in September of last year and a few days later his half-brother came out and made a winning debut at the Curragh and was subsequently sold to Hong Kong on the back of that.

So if we'd bought him a week later he'd probably have cost twice as much potentially given what the sibling did, so that was an immediate positive. That sibling was trained by Ger Lyons and has now been renamed in Hong Kong to Lumen Baba so we'll be keeping an eye on how that one gets on.

David really likes the horse, he's a big strong colt and has done everything asked of him so far. July or August was always going to be the time he'd be making his debut, he isn't one of the fast precocious types and has a bit of quality about him.

He's in a different mould to any other horse we've got really - we are looking forward to him and obviously it's good to strike up an association with a top trainer in the north who has a lot of success with his two-year-olds.

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