One of the big occasions on the jumps racing calendar is just around the corner.

The three-day November Meeting at Cheltenham Racecourse goes under starter’s orders on Friday 17^th and for many racing enthusiasts it’s the signal that the National Hunt season is truly up and running.

It’s a big event – more than 70,000 are expected over the three days – and it’s not just racegoers who are excited because it’s an exciting time for owners, trainers and jockeys too.

And the past few months have certainly been an exciting time for Gloucestershire trainer Graeme McPherson, who is looking ahead to the coming months with confidence.

McPherson, who is based at Martins Hill just outside Stow-on-the-Wold, has recently formed a new training partnership with David Killahena, someone who has made a big impression since coming over to this country from Ireland.

“He started in Ireland with Aidan O’Brien,” said McPherson. “Then he worked with Owen Burrows and Brendan Powell before becoming assistant trainer to Fergal O’Brien.”

O’Brien is based just up the road from McPherson in Withington and up until recently the two were training partners.

They went their separate ways at the beginning of August – it was an amicable split – and McPherson, a barrister, is now looking forward to developing his partnership with Killahena.

“We’re both licensed trainers but David will be more hands-on with the horses,” said McPherson, who is 53. “He had 50 or 60 winners for Fergal, he is extremely capable, he’ll be extremely successful.

“I’m more on the business side, we’ll have 40 horses in training this winter.”

So what’s the aim for McPherson this season?

“I would love to have 15 or 20 winners, that would be a good first season,” he said. “If we could get that number by the end of April I’d be delighted.

“We don’t want to be big but we do want to be successful. This time next year I’d like us to have 40 to 50 horses in training, hopefully improving the quality of horses, that has to be the aim.”

McPherson, who moved to this area from Dorset some 25 years ago, initially trained point to point horses before taking out a training licence in 2010. His most successful season was in 2016/17 when he trained 28 winners, one of four occasions that he has trained 20 or more winners in a season.

There are some big-name trainers on his doorstep – Jonjo O’Neill, Nigel Twiston-Davies and Ben Pauling as well as O’Brien – but McPherson relishes the challenge of taking them on.

“It’s good healthy competition,” he said. “Everyone gets on and it’s nice to be part of such a strong horse focus area.”

It’s even nicer when you get a few winners, of course, and McPherson is optimistic about the coming weeks and months.

“We’ve got some nice young bumper horses and we’ve got some nice young hurdlers,” he said. “It depends on the ground but we’ve got plenty of quality.”

The Showcase meeting kicks off the new jumps season at Cheltenham. The two-meeting starts on Friday.