An unyielding tenacity is one of the qualities that has made Mark Johnston the most successful racehorse trainer in Britain. The same hard-nosed approach that makes him so famously willing to enter into an argument has taken him from an unpromising beginning, buying a run-down yard with borrowed money and exercising a handful of horses on a bombing range, to the point where his tally of winners, 4,194, is more than anyone else has managed in this country.
A decade ago, having been asked the familiar question about ideal dinner guests, the Glasgow-born Johnston named William Wallace on the grounds that “he strikes me as someone who epitomised my belief in confrontation not negotiation”.
It was an answer that lay somewhere between revelation and self-parody, coming from a man who is sometimes referred to by racing followers as Braveheart, after the film about Wallace, and whose staff wear waistcoats in the green, blue and yellow Johnston tartan when they lead up his runners. Tellingly, Johnston’s 27-year-old son, Charlie, identifies as Scottish, though his home throughout his life has been in north Yorkshire.
Johnston’s stable is at Middleham, which became twinned with Agincourt in the year he moved there, 1988. He would probably bridle at any link being asserted between him and the English king who scored a notable military victory near the French town. Still, it takes only a small flight of fancy to imagine him telling his 125 employees at the start of a new Flat-racing season, “He that has no stomach for this fight, let him depart.”
The battling qualities of Johnston-trained runners have often been remarked on. Like Poet’s Society, the 20-1 shot ridden by Frankie Dettori at York on Thursday that finally broke the record, they are generally to the fore from an early stage and many a time have proved impossible to pass. Their unwillingness to concede is something they have in common with their trainer, who persisted for years with a regime that had him working long into each night, planning the next day’s exercise for more than 100 horses.
It is not to be wondered at if Johnston is generally reluctant to give ground in debate about racing. His record is the only evidence required to show his methods are sound. Interesting and provocative ideas have poured out of him over the years and his stable’s magazine, the Kingsley Klarion, was launched to express them. His rivals may demur over particular suggestions but one hopes they are at least paying attention and open to learning what they can.
Johnston’s combative nature could be overstated. In person, he is usually in either reflective or convivial mood and there was laughter at his media morning last week as he recalled the jockey Bobby Elliott running for cover the first time he was asked to ride horses on gallops that ran alongside the RAF’s bombing range at Donna Nook, near the trainer’s original base in Lincolnshire.
The horses, as Johnston recalls it, became quickly accustomed to the noise of cannon fire from the A-10 Warthogs that swooped down on the beachside targets. The sound was evidently less than terrifying. “We used to call it the big farter,” Johnston said. “If one of our horses got loose and ran on to the range, sirens would go off, the planes would pull up and the guys would come down from the tower to help us catch it.”
Johnston, now 58, started out with only one winner in 1987. By 1994, he had a Classic hero in Mister Baileys and went past 100 winners for the first time. He has never failed to hit three-figures in any subsequent year, a remarkable consistency in view of how easily a yard can be laid low by infection.
Part of that is down to seizing opportunities as they arise; Johnston is very much a bird-in-the-hand man. “I can’t believe the number of people that want to give horses a break when there’s nothing wrong with them,” he said last week. “And then it gets injured. So many of them get a break anyway, whether you like it or not. Don’t go doing it when you don’t have to.”
The big question he now faces is when to give himself a break and hand over to Charlie. Word from inside the yard is that the switch may come in four years’ time. One may be absolutely certain that Johnston will have the final say.