Richard Johnson at home with Looks Like Trouble
After more than 20 years and nearly 4,000 winners, Richard Johnson retired earlier this month. Julian Muscat speaks to the four-time champion jockey and his colleagues
RICHARD JOHNSON had plainly forgotten how long it takes to muck out. When he is finally finished, he phones back offering apologies more profuse than a best man late to the wedding of his lifelong friend.
Four days into retirement and the muchdecorated jockey is skipping out stables at his family’s farm in Herefordshire. He is not so much resting on his laurels as consigning them to the attic. The morning’s chores serve to confirm that his decision to draw stumps at Newton Abbot on 3 April was the right one.
“I felt good about it when I left the racecourse,” he says. “There are no regrets.”
Nor should there be. The Pony Club devotee who yearned to be champion jockey realised that dream in four successive seasons from 2015. Only one other jockey, AP McCoy, rode more winners during a career spanning two decades. More than that, however, the man known in racing circles as “Dickie” did everything by the book.
“You hear about Dickie being a great ambassador and all that,” AP says, “but the amazing thing is that in all that time he never put a foot wrong. I wasn’t surprised to hear he’d retired because he got every last ounce of it. I think his mind was in better shape than his body. That’s what being a jumps jockey does for you.”
For all his stellar achievements, it is remarkable to reflect that Richard would have been champion 20 times had the insatiable AP stayed put in his native Ireland. Their annual joust for supremacy wrote the defining chapters of their era, the like of which had never been seen.
The pair who sat side by side in the weighing room went hammer and tongs until AP retired in 2015. AP was driven to extremes of intensity by Richard; he maintained Richard would have transplanted him as champion had Richard, not AP, been supported by Martin Pipe’s winner-churning stable.
“Dickie absolutely tortured me for 20-odd years because he was incredibly hard to beat,” AP reflects. “I probably spent more time thinking about him than any other human being on the planet. He might well say the same about me.”
The time has come for Richard to think anew – in particular, about his ultra-supportive wife Fiona and their children Willow, Caspar and Percy.
“If there was a worst part of the job, it was all that travelling to and from the races,” he says. “I feel I missed out on a lot of family life. That was a big factor in my decision to retire.”
Richard has been taken aback with the outpouring of industry-wide appreciation of his career.
“It has been overwhelming,” he says with typical self-effacement. “At times it felt as
if I was reading about somebody else.”
Trainers who abetted Richard’s early progress included Milton Bradley, Peter Bowen, Noel Chance and David Nicholson. He rode for David as an amateur and a conditional on turning professional in 1994. Five years later, when Philip Hobbs was scouting for a stable jockey, David had no hesitation in advancing Richard. Their partnership endured to the very end, as did the earlier link Richard forged with Henry Daly’s stable.
“It was sad when Richard retired but we all agreed it was good that he did so in one piece, and on his terms,” Philip says. “There are too many memories to choose a special one, although the big wins tend to stand out. I remember when he took up the running on Rooster Booster at the second-last in the 2003 Champion Hurdle. I was thinking: ‘This is a disaster; it’s much too soon.’ But Richard knew the horse was full of running and they stormed up the hill. That was a great day.”
Philip highlights the way Richard responded to reversals as a measure of the man. “Sometimes we had a winner that he could have ridden but he was genuinely pleased for the yard,” he says. “Other jockeys would have thrown their toys out of the pram. Not Richard.”
Richard’s adherence to the highest professional ethic was evident in the way he reacted to injuries in the quest to return to the saddle as quickly as possible. In later years, he was abetted by Kate Davis, a physiotherapist whose clients include the England rugby team and dancers with the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
“Of all the athletes I work with, he’d be right up there in terms of his absolute hunger and commitment,” Kate says. “The minute he had a fall, he was on the phone, saying we had to make a plan to get him back as soon as possible.
“We pushed all the boundaries, right down to what he ate,” Kate continues. “He maxed out every time I put him through a physio routine.”
Pain can be consigned to the past, although AP ventures memories will be harder to banish.
“I don’t think Dickie realises how much he will miss riding,” AP says. “You can’t replace it, you just have to learn to live without it.”
Idle time can exacerbate the sense of loss but Richard is not short of things to keep him occupied. He will spend more time with his
“He maxed out every time I put him through
a physio routine”
KATE DAVIS
children, help his father run the family’s 1,500-acre farm and raise the progeny of six jumping mares he has accumulated at his Twyford Stud. It won’t be long before his mucking out is up to speed.
“One of the aims is to grow the breeding side of things,” he says. “It will keep me involved, and I haven’t been around for my family as much as I would have liked. I can’t quite believe I have a daughter who is nearly a teenager. The time has flown, and falling off racehorses at 43 isn’t a good idea any more. Retiring is definitely the right decision.”