Mark Johnston: the relentless record breaker who is always trying

For a man who claims to have little interest in records, Mark Johnston is awfully good at breaking them. Time and again as history has beckoned in recent seasons, he has stressed he would not dream of one extra horse just to secure a place in the record books.

Yet the trainer who is ‘always trying’, according to his yard’s famous motto, seems always to be beating the achievements of those who have gone before.

The master of Kingsley House in Middleham is driven simply by the desire to get the best out of every horse and that has been his aim since he started training in 1987, perched slightly perilously next to a bombing range in Lincolnshire, but the numbers have stacked up to unprecedented heights.

In 2009 he became the first British Flat trainer to send out 200 winners in a season and, uniquely, he has reached three figures in each of the last 26 years. In 2018 he passed Richard Hannon snr’s total to become the most successful trainer in British racing history when Poet’s Society won at the Ebor meeting to give him his 4,194th winner.

So successful has he been that it is sometimes his own records he is breaking now, such as in a remarkable July this year when he sent out an astonishing 50 winners, having struck four times in a day on three separate occasions. Not only had he bettered his own mark for the most successful month in history, he is now responsible for eight of the top 11.

After that high summer jamboree, Johnston was at it again just before the clocks went back this autumn. All season long he had looked on course to smash the record number of winners in a year on the Flat in Britain, set by Hannon snr with 235 in 2013 and equalled by Richard Fahey two years later, and the yard was always going to make it to 236.

2019: another record-breaking year

? With his 236th win in Britain in 2019, Johnston broke the trainers’ record for the most Flat wins in a calendar year in Britain – 235 by Richard Hannon senior (2013) and Richard Fahey (2015)

? This is the second time Johnston has broken the record. His previous record was 216 in 2009, when he became the first British trainer to win 200 Flat races in a year

? King’s Advice was the biggest contributor to his record – the five-year-old’s victory at Glorious Goodwood was his eighth handicap win of the year

? Johnston set a new mark for the most wins in a month in Britain by winning 50 races in July, breaking his own record of 47 in July 2015

? He achieved his ninth double century, breaking the British trainers’ record of eight he had previously shared with Martin Pipe. This is also the record 26th consecutive year in which he has saddled a century of wins

? He had become Britain’s most successful trainer of all time in 2018 and his career score now stands at nearly 4,500

? Winners abroad do not count towards a British record but the German 1,000 Guineas with Main Edition was the eighth Classic of his career (2 in Britain, 2 in Ireland, 3 in Germany, 1 in Italy)

Compiled by John Randall

Of course, quality means as much as quantity – if not more so – to a trainer who has won Classics with Attraction and Mister Baileys and whose list of Group 1 winners runs from the juvenile Awzaan to the ten-year-old Yavana’s Pace.

In that respect 2019 was a slightly frustrating year, whatever the record books say, with no top-level success in the core months, extending a surprising drought that stretches back to The Last Lion’s win in the Middle Park Stakes in 2016.

That is despite sending out a dozen winners in Group 2 or Group 3 company in 2019 and going close time and again in the highest grade. Dee Ex Bee was perhaps the unluckiest contender at the top level, suffering the misfortune of being around in the same era as dominant stayer Stradivarius, whom he chased home in the Gold Cup and Goodwood Cup.

Walk In Marrakesh, Communique and Raffle Prize (twice) were others to finish a galling second in Group or Grade 1 events and Sir Ron Priestley and Nayef Road gave him second and third behind Logician in the St Leger, making it five horses in total that Johnston has now had placed in a Classic which plays to his strength with three-year-old stayers and that he would dearly love to win.

Had Sir Ron Priestley gone one place better he would also have been a first Classic winner for Franny Norton. The veteran jockey has become an important part of the team – proving Johnston’s eye for human as well as equine talent – and the trainer was effusive in his praise after the Liverpudlian fulfilled a lifetime ambition by defying a wide draw to win a muddy Chester Cup with a masterful effort on the aptly named Making Miracles.

Franny Norton: it won't be long now until the King of Chester is back riding at his happiest hunting groundCredit: Edward Whitaker

Norton burst quickly out of stall 16, darting across and grabbing the lead while most onlookers were still wiping the rain from their eyes, and was never headed thereafter.

“We discovered Franny Norton by using him at Chester, but he’s actually the same on any track in the country,” Johnston said. “He brims with confidence, he never worries about the opposition, never worries about the other jockeys. He believes he’s as good as anybody and he comes into his own on a very difficult track like Chester.”

But no jockey demonstrates more what Johnston is all about than long-serving Joe Fanning, a self-effacing, loyal team player who is extraordinarily effective in the saddle.

It was probably no coincidence that he returned from a broken collarbone just in time to play his part in the yard’s record-breaking July and it is a measure of his ability and longevity that he rode his 2,500th British Flat winner the following month – Frankie Dettori is the only other active rider to have reached that landmark.

Through the season Fanning was associated with a couple of horses whose exploits illustrate exactly why their trainer now has his own chapter in the record books.

The jockey warned “there should be more to come” after winning on new recruit King’s Advice over a mile and a half at Lingfield in March and rarely can a prediction have been proved more right.

The five-year-old improved in a way that was extraordinary, even by the standards of the yard’s middle-distance handicappers, so that five months later he landed his eighth win of the season off a BHA mark fully 37lb higher, winning a £100,000 race at Glorious Goodwood where Johnston was top trainer for the 13th time since 1998.

Joe Fanning wins on King's Advice at Goodwood in AugustCredit: Alan Crowhurst

Fanning also won Scotland’s only Group race for one of the country’s greatest racing sons, with a filly who embodies the stable’s approach. Rose Of Kildare was a €3,000 yearling who thrived on a busy season and showed tenacity typical of her trainer’s runners as she rewarded enterprising placing to land the Group 3 Firth of Clyde Stakes, looking better than ever on her 11th appearance of the year.

Just to prove how much her yard’s horses thrive on racing, she then defied a penalty to beat a field of bluebloods in the Oh So Sharp Stakes at Newmarket.

‘Braveheart’ may be a slightly jokey nickname for Glasgow-born Johnston but there is many a southern trainer nowadays who probably understands how the English felt when William Wallace came raiding.