To purchase the book, please visit: The Racing Post

Chapter one

Part of my success story is that, from the outset, I’ve never made any excuses for my failures. The buck stops here. But at the same time, there are times when I think, ‘Anybody could do this job, it’s not rocket science. It’s not particularly clever to be a good racehorse trainer.’

It’s the first Sunday in December 2005 and autumn’s hand is already in winter’s harsh grip. On the moorland above the North Yorkshire town of Middleham a raw, blustery wind chastises you as harshly as a Victorian mother scolding a recalcitrant child, bringing a ruddy glow to your features. Those heady days of summer – of Goodwood, York, Royal Ascot at York, and the lesser meetings – when Mark Johnston’s yard hammered out winners like a demonic blacksmith seem an age away.
As you clamber out of Johnston’s four-wheel-drive you can only envy the winter wear of the sheep that occupy the grassland surrounding the 270-acre Park Farm, his latest acquisition. It’s another annexe to an operation which is less a presence in the town and beyond, more an occupying force.
This is a dormant period for Flat yards, when they find nourishment in the past season’s glories to carry them through the winter and prepare to gorge themselves once more, come the spring – as all must believe they will. Johnston’s is no exception. Like a kitchen which can be consistently guaranteed to produce cordon bleu fare, there is the tantalising whiff of Classic and other big-race potential emanating from the Johnston premises. For the moment, though, the stables’ principal hopes, including Nakheel, Black Charmer, Atlantic Waves, Prince Of Light and In Full Cry no more than simmering pots on the back-burner. Who knows what kind of dish they will serve up. This limbo-land in Flat racing’s journey through the year is an opportunity for the horses to rest and recover from their wear and tear, while the trainers themselves reflect on and re-evaluate their operations.
We tour Johnston’s latest property purchase. It is located a mile from his principal yard, Kingsley House, near the centre of the town. Park Farm was originally owned by brothers Peter and Tony Walton, the former of whom is the husband of trainer Kate. The additional yard has become a necessity now that Johnston invariably has to accommodate a roster of over 200 horses – assuming that as many new charges as he hopes and expects to train next season arrive in the spring. It means he now has three bases in and near Middleham, and it reaffirms the yard’s position as one of the country’s largest training establishments. At this rarefied level of training equine populations are fluid, so it is difficult to ascertain who is superior numerically. Suffice to say that Johnston vies for that status with Richard Hannon, Mick Channon, Barry Hills, Sir Michael Stoute and the Maktoum family’s Godolphin operation. ‘Richard Hannon probably runs the most runners in a season, followed by Mick Channon, followed by me,’ Johnston opines. ‘But what you can say is that the six of us consistently have all got 200 horses.’
As we survey Park Farm, he elaborates on his plans for the facilities with the enthusiasm of an estate agent determined to claim his percentage. He explains the various uses to which the new yard will be put. One block, in particular, is for horses out of training, recovering from injury, and for those to be quarantined (horses coming in from other yards are isolated for a month). That is all the responsibility of one of his yard managers, Penny Skilton. Though Johnston has his preferred methods, he does not attempt to create some great mystique out of the skill of training. ‘Part of my success story,’ he says, ‘is that, from the outset, I’ve never made any excuses for my failures. The buck stops here. But at the same time, there are times when I think, “Anybody could do this job, it’s not rocket science. It’s not particularly clever to be a good racehorse trainer.”’
On this day, Johnston is clad in fleece, jacket and cords. He would not strike the casual onlooker as the patriarchal figure he has become; indeed, at such moments there is almost a diffidence about the Scot. He is an observer, a listener, casting glances at anyone in his proximity like a salmon fisherman watching his fly. Yet there is an inescapable presence about him that perhaps has – no, it must have – its origins in the Caledonian blood that surges through him. It is an ebullience, a self-confidence and self-belief frequently found in many of his compatriots who dominate public life throughout the UK, including within the seats of government. Even in his quieter moments, such as now, he exudes a vehement pride in all he has achieved – a demeanour that can be mistaken for arrogance.
As you swiftly discover, for all the polished civility of his television appearances, it doesn’t take much to provoke the former president of the National Trainers’ Federation and columnist in many newspapers and periodicals, including the Racing Post, The Times and Horse & Hound. When roused by contentious issues, he can be a vocal and intimidating opponent, mounting his soap-box with the animation of a particularly garrulous speaker at Hyde Park Corner. He keeps his verbal flick-knives well concealed, but he will readily produce one, and produce it at your throat. Certainly he enjoys puncturing balloons of conventional wisdom. Sometimes an adversary is unnecessary. Johnston could start a row in an empty barn, as he often, self-mockingly agrees. What’s more, if he doesn’t happen to be inside such a construction, he’ll go out and search for one. Around here, there are plenty.
You’d need to be a confirmed townie, damned with a soul of stone, not to be captivated by the scene before you. Newmarket may boast a greater equine population, but the horses there do not work before such an idyllic backdrop as the verdant and fertile Wensleydale, the largest valley in the Yorkshire Dales. John Wesley was entranced by it when he travelled through here in 1790. Anyone enraptured by the miracle that is the racehorse in motion should make the pilgrimage here, to the acres surrounding this North Yorkshire town.
Middleham was granted its first charter in 1389, and despite its two market squares it is the smallest town in Yorkshire, you are told. Which is probably why everyone appears to refer to it as ‘the village’. Here, the ghosts of equine legends gallop past, nurtured to the finest pitch by the skills of men such as Captain Neville Crump, who once trained at Warwick House Stables, the entrance to which stands across the road from Kingsley House. The captain trained his three Grand National winners here: Sheila’s Cottage in 1948, Teal in 1952, and the 1960 victor Merryman II. Crump, who also trained five Scottish and two Welsh National winners, died in 1997, aged 86, and is buried in Middleham cemetery. In common with a considerable portion of Middleham, Warwick House has been assimilated into the Johnston operation. It
has been in Johnston’s ownership since 1994. Like a feudal baron, much of what Johnston surveys he owns, or exerts some kind of influence over. Much of the remainder, including the gallops, he shares with
his neighbours.
You can understand why these acres were a ready invitation to Johnston’s training forebears. The area evokes a sense of history, with evidence of a Celt, Roman, Viking and Norman presence, and in the last half-century much of it equine. Listen, and you can almost hear the pounding hooves of Surrey, the white mount of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III. It is said the horse was ridden on what are now racehorse gallops more than 500 years ago. According to Shakespeare, Surrey was King Richard’s charger at the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485, which ended the Wars of the Roses. Few are unfamiliar with Richard’s cry in the heat of bloody conflict, ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ Middleham’s upper market square has what is called the ‘Swine Cross’ because it bears a stone carving resembling a pig. A guide to Wensleydale, written by Stephen I. Robinson, tells us that it is thought to represent the white boar emblem of Richard III, who granted the market a second charter in 1479.
Richard apparently came to Middleham in 1461 as a boy of eleven, and it was here that he was educated and received his training to be a knight. He married Anne Neville, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, a man so powerful in the land that he was known as ‘the kingmaker’, and they lived at Middleham Castle. After that, this romantic tale takes a decidedly sinister twist. When King Edward IV died, Richard became protector to the new king, a boy of twelve. Richard then seized the throne and confined the young king and his brother to the Tower of London. Whether he also murdered them has never been confirmed. However, Richard’s reign ended prematurely when he fell at Bosworth Field.

What can be substantiated is that racehorses have been trained in the area for some 250 years, and the Cistercian monks of nearby Jervaulx Abbey were breeding horses even before then. There was horseracing on the High Moor as early as 1739. Isaac Cape, who was a jockey in the first half of the eighteenth century, became the first specialist racehorse trainer here. Meetings were held regularly for many decades, but they ended in 1873 after disputes between trainers and local gait owners, the landowners with grazing rights on the moorland. Since then, the High Moor has been used only for training and the surrounding area has become a haven for its practitioners, who have settled here.
Middleham has suffered periods when its fortunes have waned and stables have stood empty. Kingsley House was but one yard that became desolate. The weeds grew to chest height. That was the scene when the Johnstons first arrived here late in 1988 like a family of pioneers in the Old West, following their wagon as it rolled into a new town. But today the training industry is thriving again, in and around Middleham. Horseracing has brought prosperity. And nowhere more so than within Johnston’s accumulated properties.
An aircraft stands in a tractor shed, a makeshift hangar, at Park Farm. It is more than merely a symbol of affluence and success. Indeed, it is no Lear jet. It is a 30-year-old Piper Cherokee, which set Johnston back £85,000. But what that purchase does reflect is the amount of travelling he undertakes, countrywide and within Europe, to supervise the running of his charges, and to attend sales. A drive to Goodwood, for example, can be a twelve-hour round trip. The Piper Cherokee reduces it to four, even if there are taxi rides at the other end. ‘It’s been life-changing,’ he says. ‘I should have done it five years ago.’
He explains enthusiastically that new gallops are to be laid alongside the ‘airstrip’, which is an adjacent field. Johnston is a compulsive expansionist, as though he lives in mortal fear of having to post a ‘House Full’ sign, and having to turn away a horse. He should have CBE after his name, for ‘Constantly Building the Empire’ describes him accurately. ‘I’ve spent my whole career building and expanding,’ he says. ‘When I stop doing that, I’ll give up.’ He has a rapacious desire to transform fallow land into gallops, derelict sheds into rows of boxes. He is the project manager who is his own architect.
Though he has clambered up to a plateau of sorts, consistently accumulating well over 100 winners a season and remaining among the leaders in the trainers’ table, he is still riven with ambition. It is an ambition so naked it’s surprising he’s never been arrested for indecent exposure. ‘Always Trying’ has long been the Johnston motto, and statement of intent. It originated when a punter leant over the rail of the paddock at Hamilton one day and asked him if a particular horse would win. ‘Always trying,’ he retorted in an impatient tone. ‘Always trying.’ And it stuck, as much for its ambiguity as anything else, one suspects. Certainly it makes people think. His approach is summarised, quite simply, by the declaration, ‘I constantly strive for more because I want to be regarded as number one; not just champion trainer in Britain, but in Europe. I need to be up there, top of the Premier League.’ The Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, a fellow son of the city of Glasgow, and one of his owners, would empathise with such aspirations – and, no doubt, remind him what a daunting prospect it is.
The previous evening, purely by coincidence, we’d both travelled to Old Trafford to watch United play. I was there to write about the game for my newspaper; Johnston had been invited into the directors’ box by Ferguson. It was a rare interruption in Johnston’s work schedule, although, like a soldier, a trainer can never stand easy. He is always, to an extent, on parade. Johnston can never be accused of underselling himself. Everyone he meets through social contacts is a potential owner. Though he boasts many distinguished names among his owners – Sheikh Mohammed and the extended Maktoum family, the Duke of Roxburghe, former British Horseracing Board chief Peter Savill, and Ferguson, to name but a few – there can never be an assumption about their patronage.
For the major Flat training establishments, the closure of turf racing in November can be likened to the end of the summer season for an end-of-the-pier show. A kind of depression sets in. Perhaps more appropriately, we should refer to it as the end-of-the-peer show, as the more precocious blue-bloods of the sport who lord it in the spring and summer give way to the hardier, generally more durable stock of National Hunt racing. (Johnston is by no means a total stranger to the National Hunt game. His first runner ever was over jumps, and, as he will readily remind you, the stable has actually won Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle.) Flat racing continues, but, in truth, apologetically so, on the all-weather racecourses – despite the increasing utilisation of that surface – as the jump season swaggers increasingly into the consciousness of many racing folk. Back in Johnston’s office, administration manager Debbie Albion and staff are as occupied as ever on this Sunday morning – there is no rest on the Sabbath for these workers – a few prospective runners for the Wolverhampton and Southwell meetings chalked up on their wall. But these meetings are but minor trespasses on jump territory. For now, the debate about prospective victors of the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National takes precedence over discussion of next year’s Classics. This year, however, a significant vacuum has been created. The much-loved three-time Gold Cup winner Best Mate collapsed and died during his seasonal pipe-opener at Exeter.
Despite the vast scale of the Johnston enterprise, it remains very much a family business. When you talk of ‘the yard’, you refer not just to the trainer but to his vivacious wife of two decades, Deirdre, who is his assistant, and the elder of his two sons, Charlie, fifteen, who rides work and has even made television appearances on behalf of the stable. (Yes, I agree, as a general rule we should be spared the outpourings
of precocious, know-all offspring of sporting or any other kind of personality. But there are exceptions, and Johnston Junior is a bright, articulate boy who does his parents proud.) Charlie is determined to become a trainer. His younger brother, Angus, thus far shows no inclination.
And there is an enormous extended family. By mid-summer, the busiest time for the yard, Johnston will employ no fewer than 119: 85 full-time staff and 34 part-time. They include seven yard managers – the equivalent of departmental heads in a conventional business – and two full-time vets, James Tate (son of trainer Thomas Tate and nephew of Michael Dickinson, the man who trained the first five home in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup) and Dr Rogerio F. De Sousa Filho, from Brazil. Their facilities include an equine pool, two endoscopes and two X-ray machines. Later in the season, Johnston will outlay £16,000 on an ultrasound scanner, for the diagnosis of pelvic and soft tissue injuries. It will probably be the only yard in the country with such an advanced piece of equipment.
Many trainers believe that a visit to the box of every horse every day is an essential part of their schedule. Johnston doesn’t believe it is a necessity. It would also be logistically impossible for him. ‘Every night I get a written report from my yard managers regarding any veterinary problems or changes to a horse’s well-being,’ he says. However, although Johnston recognises the benefits of delegation to an efficient workforce, he cannot find it within himself to purge totally the control-freak from within his psyche. God forbid that circumstances remove him from the entire process of management. That would be anathema to him. ‘If things aren’t going so well, I have to be out there, hands-on and involved myself,’ he says. ‘I have a fantastic staff, but you have to be continually striving to make them better, and to push them all.’
Johnston is not one for small talk. You sense he feels that it is his time being wasted. Certainly he will not countenance loose talk. He corrects false impressions and errors of facts with the venom of Freddie Flintoff smacking a loose ball over the boundary ropes. And he is obsessed with statistics. ‘Not quite as good as ever,’ he had corrected me politely but firmly the previous year after I had cheerfully suggested that his team was in its pomp. ‘We’re sixth in the trainers’ table. I have been as high as second.’ He can recall most statistics readily, particularly those of the yard’s winners to runners. Those he can’t are at his fingertips: his mobile phone doubles as a mini-computer and contains every detail of every horse’s current progress. He’ll remind you that the zenith was 2003, in which year the stable was responsible for a record number of winners, 146. They earned £2,454,440 in prize money. The following year, 124 winners produced record prize money of £3,121,282. Whatever the fate of his team in the coming year, you sense he will be bitterly disappointed if he doesn’t pass, or at least approach, the targets he set with those achievements.
Those within the lower echelon of the training ranks tend to covet and cherish every individual victory. These days, Johnston is only genuinely thrilled by big-race triumphs, such as those of his formidable Cup horse Double Trigger and the remarkable dual 1,000 Guineas winner Attraction, who, in September 2005, after the 10th success of an outstanding career, had been retired to the paddocks of her owner, the Duke of Roxbroughe.
There are those who maintain that such an attitude confirms the perception that this is more a winner-churning works than a stable. That appearance could be said to be reinforced by the fact that Johnston asks his staff to ‘clock in’, as though this were Johnston & Johnston, Widget Manufacturers. Sceptics contend that such a trainer cannot possibly possess an intimate knowledge of all his horses. That was the author’s suspicion too, but he was swiftly disabused of that notion. Johnston appears meticulous in the knowledge and preparation of all his runners. I cannot recall his being anything but au fait with any of his charges at any one time. And anyway, confirmation of a horse’s condition and future plans is only one phone-call away.
‘Size is everything’, they say. That has long been Johnston’s maxim when it comes to the population of a stable, although he will reluctantly concede, if reminded of it, ‘We actually hit the first Classic winner (Mister Baileys in the 1994 2,000 Guineas) when we had around 70 horses.’ He is disdainful of those trainers who will settle for less than half his complement, as though the number they train is some kind of optimum for the industry. From the journalistic side of the great divide, I confirm to him that many trainers consider the preferred number to be considerably less than his. ‘That’s what they say,’ he scoffs. ‘They’ll tell you, “Oh, I’m comfortable with 50, 70”, whatever, but that’s only because they can’t get any more. My view is, if you’re not moving forwards, the only way is back. I remember James Given, an ex-assistant of ours (and also, originally, a vet) who went into training on his own account, being quoted as saying, after a couple of years, “Seventy is as many as I want. When you have over 100, it gets too much like a factory.” Well, I took that as a direct slur against us. It’s strange that James now has over 100 horses …’ Johnston shrugs, and continues mischievously, rather like a teenage hot-head who feels he has been slighted and needs to settle the issue, ‘I’ve never challenged him on it. Perhaps I should.’ When he chances upon a theme he would like to develop, the 46-year-old Glaswegian’s normal throaty growl threatens to become a bark. For once, he lets that particular matter drop. For now.
He will concede that a large complement of horses was not penned on his original blueprint for success. ‘When I started out I was naive and didn’t realise that if you want to train Classic winners you need 150-plus horses,’ he says. ‘It was footballer and manager Kevin Keegan, I think, who once said that the strength of a team on the pitch is dictated by the strength of those sitting on the bench. The same applies to us, to some extent. If you select a small team and think you’re going to go to war all season with them, you’re wrong. You need reserves, a pressure from behind of others coming through. I wasn’t the only one who made that mistake. Godolphin had a huge pool to draw on from their other trainers, and they originally thought they’d operate with a 40-strong team of elite horses drawn from those yards. They rapidly realised that couldn’t be done. They had to have a big team. There’s pressure every day to stay up there. Some people say to me that I’ve got to get away from that kind of thinking. Yet the fact is that, comparing years, the curve is upwards. Each individual horse has a better chance of winning a race with me now than ten years ago, and a better chance than with the vast majority of smaller trainers.’
The figures certainly tend to confirm that theory. The 2005 season resulted in another prodigious yield for the yard, culminating in Crosspeace winning on the last day of the turf season at Doncaster, the Listed CIU Serlby Stakes. It has left everyone in the best of spirits, anticipating a grand season to come. Crosspeace’s triumph left the yard with a total of 144 winners from 883 runners, and a record of just under £1.8 million in first prize money earned. Johnston finished fourth in the trainers’ league table, based on prize money. Only Michael Stoute, Aidan O’Brien – both of whom benefit from a better quality of resources overall from their patrons than other handlers – and Richard Hannon, who had run significantly more horses (1,259), boasted higher tallies. In May 2006 the yard would record its 1,700th winner when Peter Savill’s Peppertree Lane won at York. It is a testament to the consistency of Johnston’s achievements that the 1,000th winner, Double Honour at Hamilton, had been celebrated fewer than six years earlier, on 4 September 2000. ‘Owners look at those records, of course they do,’ Johnston insists. ‘Generally all those trainers at the top are doing their job pretty well.’
First thing every day he scours the Racing Post for the Today’s Trainer section which gives handlers’ records over the previous fortnight, in terms of wins and places. It offers a telling insight into current trends. ‘The measure is to look at the percentage of horses getting placed,’ Johnston says. ‘If we’re hitting 50 per cent then we’re really flying. That’s incredible. It usually only happens at certain parts of year. If we’re running at a third everything’s fine. But if it drops below 25 per cent we’re in dire straits. If we don’t have a winner in a week, then we’re really going badly.’ Like his football counterparts, Johnston is acutely conscious that future prosperity is all about today’s results. ‘If you’re getting plenty of winners for an owner, they’re never going to leave,’ he asserts.
Unfortunately, you can train them just too well. Those owned by members of the Maktoum family which excel on the racecourse – although not necessarily every horse – tend to be transferred to Godolphin to continue their careers. Johnston experienced such a loss after Shamardal had won the previous season’s Dewhurst Stakes. ‘Nobody wants to lose such a grand horse, but we all know that’s the name of the game,’ he says. ‘Sheikh Mohammed knows it hurts, and there was a very generous compensation from him, including a huge present for the staff.’ And it is not only Maktoum horses that are vacuumed up by Godolphin. Sometimes, as we discuss later, his other owners are made offers they can’t – and, Johnston believes, certainly shouldn’t – refuse. The revolving doors here tend to be frequently in motion. Some of the best horses have already gone to Godolphin, such as Winged Cupid, runner-up to another Godolphin recruit Palace Episode at Doncaster in the Racing Post Trophy, together with Stepping Up and Austrian, both of whom displayed potential as two-year-olds.
It is nothing unusual to find Sheikh Mohammed involved in acquisitions, and not merely equine. In September 2005 he splurged $9.7 million on a colt by Storm Cat at the yearling sales in Keeneland. At the time it was the third highest price for a yearling in sales history.

Also recently, the newspaper business pages have contained many stories relating to the purchase of the British corporate icon P&O by a Maktoum family-backed company. The 2005 season was, though, a disappointing one for his Godolphin operation, one which demonstrated that purchasing power may give you a head start but it can never guarantee success. Later in the coming 2006 season we would witness this theory borne out in dramatic fashion with the adventures of Marcus Tregoning’s Sir Percy and Pam Sly’s Speciosa, both purchased for no more than a pittance in Sheikh Mohammed’s terms.
Despite the notable losses to Godolphin – and, thus far, disconcertingly, no confirmation yet of new arrivals from Sheikh Mohammed and the Maktoum family as a whole – Johnston’s yard is flourishing at the end of yet another year with over a century of winners accumulated. Such consistent achievement ensures that Kingsley House remains a magnet for owners, many of whom entrust Johnston to purchase their bloodstock. Starting at the August sales in Deauville and continuing on to Doncaster, Keeneland, Goffs (in Ireland) and Newmarket, Johnston has lavished around £1.5 million on yearlings in 2005. Some are pre-ordered, and payment is guaranteed, but around half a million is spent speculatively on behalf of owners who may be prepared to back his judgement (they usually do). His assessments have to be sound. His reputation depends upon it, and Johnston knows too well that public perception is a key component of success.
There are, too, invariably arrivals of some ‘second-hand’ runners – older horses that have already run from other yards, and have possibly been in different ownership. There may be some hand-me-downs from the world’s most powerful owners, who traditionally cull what they perceive to be those animals that are not going to be among the absolute elite towards, and sometimes well before, the end of the season, so as to allow for the intake of the next season’s two-year-olds. Johnston has recently been the recipient of Shalapour. The four-year-old, bred and formerly owned by the Aga Khan had finished third in the 2005
Irish Derby when trained by John Oxx. He is now in the ownership of Swiss patron and Johnston stable stalwart Markus Graff. There are expectations that the newcomer could become a decent Cup horse.
Some of the yard’s already familiar staying names will again take up arms for the stable in 2006. They include the Johnston stalwart Bandari, who boasts eleven victories, including the 2005 Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot (run at York), and Golden Quest, who had been diagnosed with a knee fracture after finishing a half-length runner-up in the 2005 Goodwood Cup.
It was at this very early stage of my season visiting the yard that Johnston first articulated that primeval force which motivates him and provides his raison d’être. One assumes that what provides that drive is the search for those elusive moments of glory with a Classic victor, that tantalising moment when the eyes of all racegoers, and many beyond, are on you, feeding an ego. Not so, according to Johnston. ‘It’s fear that drives me on,’ he says. ‘Fear that the whole thing will collapse around my ears. That’s why I can’t take my eyes off the ball for a minute.’ That revelation takes you aback slightly, as the foundations are seemingly cast in reinforced concrete. Yet, if you think about it, the advantages of large-scale production are only in play if investment – and by that I mean the horses sent by owners – remains high enough to support a workforce geared up to care for 200-plus charges. Johnston is adamant about this. If, for some reason, the horse numbers were allowed to dwindle significantly – say, to 150 – ‘the whole thing would haemorrhage money’, he claims. Later in the year we would return to that subject and discuss why it is imperative that the yard maintains a roster of at least 200.
But it is human turnover that engages Johnston’s attention on this particular Sunday. The boss is preparing to make annual appraisals of his key personnel, and he sets the year’s statistics before me. By now we have returned to the Johnstons’ kitchen within the house that overlooks the office, and the entrance to the yard. Like many racehorse stables, that room is for more than breakfast and lunch; it is the centre of its galaxy, around which revolve the suns and planets, from the work-riders to the lads and lasses mucking out. Outside, on the wall of the nearest line of boxes, is fixed a board on which records of attendance, sickness and holidays are maintained in various colours. The implication is clear: there is no hiding place for the slacker or absentee. Is it healthy for staff relations for everyone to be aware of their colleagues’ records? I had my doubts about that, as I did about the clocking-in procedure. Doesn’t this reduce them to mere blue-collar workers rather than the skilled employees that most would prefer to be regarded? It could easily be a contentious area, but Johnston sniffs dismissively at such an assertion. ‘We have this points system I copied from Kimberly-Clark (Richard Huckerby, one of his group of business advisers, worked there, together with Ron Huggins, who owned Double Trigger). They have a scheme called Save with Safety; it’s about money for good attendance. They pointed out to me that it’s not a coincidence that the same person gets injured all the time. It’s not coincidence that the same person is sick, even if they are genuinely sick.’ He claims that staff prefer it if a colleague’s poor attendance record is made public. The staff approve, he adds.
Staff turnover is slightly disconcerting, though. His figures reveal that the yard has lost around 40 of its workforce in a year, out of just over 100. But within British industry as a whole, Johnston points out, the norm is 38 per cent. Yet it is evident that some of his yard managers are less successful at retaining staff than others. Like Sir Alex Ferguson, Johnston will attempt to find remedies for poor performances; he has plans to switch formations. There is an appliance of science in his methods. He searches diligently for ways of improving the management of the yard which he insists can only improve the number and winner ratio.
Then he recalls wryly that it was not always thus. Not when he and Deirdre, a vet in practice and a teacher, both in their twenties, set out on an expedition of discovery in the precarious world of horseracing. Nor many years before that when, as a schoolboy, Johnston first recognised where his destiny lay.