BIG INTERVIEW
Nick Townsend spends time with top trainer Mark Johnston
Aquiet May Monday in the racing calendar, but for Mark Johnston, there’s no lull in his relentless search for winners. Seated in the dining room of Kingsley House, the Middleham base he has transformed from a down-at-heel yard in 1988 to the powerhouse it is today, we pause our conversation to watch on TV as Military Two Step, a three-year-old daughter of the stable’s 2011 Irish St Leger victor Jukebox Jury, makes her debut in a 1m2f fillies’ novice event at Beverley.
Just four runners, but a John and Thady Gosden runner is clear favourite. Approaching half-way, jockey Ben Curtis chases the Johnston runner along. Her trainer mutters in a tone of resignation: “I don’t think we’re going to feature here.” Which only goes to show that horses can occasionally deceive even record-breaking trainers.
Slowly, the filly gets the hang of the task in hand. “Go on!” Johnston exhorts before his charge scores readily, before adding: “This is home bred – one that we bred, but couldn’t sell. We were going to keep her, and run her in a bumper and sell her for jumping. Jukebox Jury is all the rage for the jumping people. But then he (Jukebox Jury) had a Group 1 winner last year on the Flat (Tony Mullins’ Princess Zoe in the Prix du Cadran at Longchamp), and I thought ‘stuff this, I’m going to run her (on the Flat)!’”
It is far from the first time in a 34-year career that a bold approach has secured a dividend for the Scot.
That Beverley race offered winning prizemoney of just £3,349, and that filly may be no world-beater. Yet, in its own way, his satisfaction at that moment was as great as when he witnessed the Dubai Gold Cup triumph of his Subjectivist at Meydan at the end of March, with prizemoney nearly a hundred times greater.
His four-year-old colt scorched home by over five lengths which had the commentator gushing: “The front runner Subjectivist has run them ragged.” It was a scintillating performance which earned his owner Dr Jim Walker over £328,000 and plaudits from pundits who excitably questioned his Ascot Gold Cup potential. Could this finally be the Johnston representative to lower the colours of the mighty Stradivarius?
The John and Thady Gosden-trained Cup king must feel like a stone in the shoe of the Johnston team; one that’s seemingly impossible to dislodge. Five times, his horses have been beaten into second place by Stradivarius; Nayef Road twice (in last season’s Ascot Gold Cup and Goodwood Cup) and Dee Ex Bee (in 2019 in the Ascot Gold Cup, the Goodwood Cup and at York).
Sir Ron Priestley, a half-brother of Subjectivist, who won the Group 2 Jockey Club Cup winner at Newmarket at the Guineas meeting, but only third to Andrew Balding’s Spanish Mission in the Yorkshire Cup, could have been an Ascot Gold Cup contender. But Johnston, who knows a thing or two about the event, having won it twice with Royal Rebel and once with Double Trigger, says: “I think we’ll be keeping him to 1m4f and 1m6f at the moment. We’ll probably go to the Ascot Gold Cup with Nayef Road and Subjectivist.”
And with hope or expectation? “He’s got to weaken one day, hasn’t he?” is his wry reflection on the Gosdens’ star performer, now a seven-year-old, who accounted for third-placed Nayef Road by 1½ lengths in the Sagaro Stakes at Ascot in April.
Johnston says of Subjectivist, who cost this master of astute, bargain acquisitions, 62,000gns – no more than loose change for some of racing’s big spenders who readily lavish over six
figures – “It’s purely subjective, but we would rate Subjectivist quite a bit higher than Nayef Road. We think he’s a lot more likely to trouble Stradivarius.”
The bookmakers tend to concur. Subjectivist is 5-1 second favourite for the Royal Ascot feature and Nayef Road 161, with Stradivarius around 6-4 favourite. But Johnston insists of Subjectivist: “He has all the credentials. He’s a Group 1 winner over a mile and 6, a Group 2 winner over 2 miles, breaking the track record. He’s the right kind of horse to take him (Stradivarius) on with.”
The Middleham handler, 61, who overtook Richard Hannon Snr’s total number of winners, when a Frankie Dettori-partnered Poet’s Society gave him his 4,194 winner at Goodwood in August 2018, was at Meydan to witness his four-year-old son of Teofilo’s triumph.
It culminated in a lengthy absence from the yard, Johnston having arrived in Dubai three or four days before the race and, after it, stayed in the Maldives for 12 days. Back home, he had to selfisolate in the house for ten days because he had been in contact with someone who tested positive for Covid.
The fact that the yard continued to despatch winners under the control of his elder son Charlie, like him a qualified vet and currently one of his assistant trainers, was no great surprise. Johnston and Charlie are to apply for a joint licence, probably this season, with a full handover of the yard planned in two or three years,
“In all, for nearly four weeks, I was never out in the yard. During that time, Charlie did it all. From a horseracing point of view, I have absolutely no doubt he can run the whole show, and the number of winners will not alter,” says Johnston, who was also out of action for around three weeks last year after contracting Covid.
It has been some year for both father and son, and the 125-strong team behind them. Barely had the crowdfree New Year’s Eve fireworks show in London fizzled out than the Johnston yard had responded with its own missiles of intent, recording the yard’s most successful January since he began training in 1987.
At the time of writing, Johnston had sent out 83 winners from 382 runners, a 22% strike rate. Prizemoney was £942,113, and Johnston was No. 1 in the Flat trainers’ standings, ahead of John and Thady Gosden, on 34 wins from
160 runs 21% strike rate and prizemoney of £739,826
All that could change, of course, come The Derby meeting (Johnston’s Gear Up, fifth in the Dante at York, should not be discounted over the longer trip of the colts’ Classic, incidentally) and Royal Ascot, but for the moment, the operation shows every indication of producing a tenth year of a double century of winners.
One beneficiary is likely to be jockey Curtis, who has already had 54 winners this year, of which 26 have been on Johnston runners.
The Irishman is effectively the stable’s No.1, although there is no formal arrangement, according to Johnston. “We said to him ‘we’re not going to use somebody who keeps saying I’m not available to ride that one’. We said ‘We’ll put you first, if you put us first’.”
The yard still plan to use stable stalwarts Joe Fanning and Franny Norton, but Johnston explains: “Joe’s 50, Franny’s 50. They’re riding, to my mind, as well as any time in their careers. You’ve seen Franny on Sir Ron Priestley, and Joe on Subjectivist. But they can’t go on for ever. And we can’t have a situation where they just stop and we haven’t got anyone else.”
The association with Curtis has led to the odds on him becoming champion jockey shortening significantly. “He could make it – absolutely,” says Johnston. “They’ve got him at third in the betting, and I think that’s where he should be. To be champion jockey, you need a yard that’s going to give you a big chunk of winners.”
Curiously, the jockeys’ championship is based on winners while the trainers’ equivalent is decided by total prizemoney. In a 34-year-career, Johnston has never been champion trainer. Maybe he will succeed in his final season as a ‘sole-trader’ before forming a joint enterprise with Charlie? If not, it is not something he’ll dwell on.
“How many times would I have been champion if based on numbers?
Twelve, maybe, fourteen, I can’t remember. But I’m not crying over that.”
Not when you can reflect on creating a record-breaking empire from nothing but a veterinary qualification and an allconsuming desire to succeed.