The turf | 13 September 2018

An American trainer was once asked to name the greatest quality of the legendary jockey Willie Shoemaker. He replied: ‘The way he meets me in the Winner’s Circle.’ British racehorse owners would probably give the same answer about the Middleham-based trainer Mark Johnston. When Poet’s Society passed the post first in the Clipper Logistics Handicap during York’s Ebor Festival last month, Johnston became the winningmost trainer in British racing history, passing Richard Hannon Snr’s total of 4,193.

The athlete Jesse Owens once declared: ‘In the end it’s extra effort that separates a winner from second place. But winning takes a lot more than that, too. It starts with complete command of the fundamentals. Then it takes desire, determination, discipline and self-sacrifice.’ In an ever-more competitive environment, Johnston’s landmark is to be saluted not just because he is a man with the all-consuming desire to win that drove both Martin Pipe in the yard and A.P. McCoy in the saddle, but also because he is a thinker, an educator of the wider racing public and a revolutionary. He also works harder than almost anybody else in the sport.

Johnston has done it his way. He did not start with a horsey background. There was no setting-up legacy from a well-bred auntie in the shires. He had no pupillage in the yard of a master of his trade but was the son of working-class parents, brought up in an East Kilbride council house. He initially qualified as a vet, before setting up in a remote part of Lincolnshire 31 years ago to test out theories first conceived by training whippets. When he trained his first winner Hinari Video at Carlisle in 1987 there were no specialist racing channels: he recalls that he and wife Deirdre put up the racing results on Teletext and watched the page all evening.