'We're Not At The Sales To Buy Clean X-Rays-We're There To Buy A Racehorse'

Mark Johnston, one of the most successful trainers of the modern era in Britain, joined forces with his son Charlie last winter and things couldn't be going better for the father-and-son team in their first full season holding the licence together. 

   The Middleham team sent out 100 or more winners for 28 consecutive seasons and, with 94 winners already on the board this term, are sure to surpass that tally once again. 

    Interestingly, the Johnstons have sent out 26 juvenile winners this season, which is more than any other trainer in Britain, which is vindication for the team's proactive approach to the yearling sales in recent years.

   That's not to say Mark Johnston has spent a fortune in recruiting his stable full of stars. In fact, the opposite is true. 

   No man has a better reputation at sniffing out a bargain at the sales and, speaking with Brian Sheerin in this week's Q&A, the trainer shared his unique approach to recruiting talented Thoroughbreds as well as commenting on the major issues hanging over racing in Britain.

Brian Sheerin: So far this term, yourself and Charlie have sent out 94 winners, which is more than any other trainer in Britain. Not only that, but 26 of those winners were recorded with juveniles, which is six more than anyone else [Richard Hannon] has achieved. Things are going pretty well.

Mark Johnston: We have roughly 220 horses in training but we are significantly down on previous years. We are 15% down on last year. We had our peak numbers in 2019, which was just before Covid hit, and the drop-off in numbers has been mostly within the older brigade. We bought a lot of yearlings last year but, in terms of older horses, we are down–we got no Shadwell horses this year and there was quite a significant reduction in the Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum horses as well. The Arab-owned horses tended to be above average and gave us more quality so it's been quite tough filling that gap but, so far, we have been hanging on in there.

BS: How have you adapted to fill that gap and remain so competitive?

MJ: We have quite a number of empty boxes but are looking to get them filled. We realised four or five years ago that we were buying less and less yearlings and it was all snowballing downwards. We decided that we needed to get the number of speculative purchases back up and we made a concerted effort to buy a minimum of 55 yearlings last year. We did that and got the majority of them sold as well. We have quite a few more horses in our own ownership than we would have had 10 years ago perhaps but it has still been good policy and has paid off well. If we don't have yearlings on the shelf we can't get new owners into the yard.

BS: You bought 55 yearlings last year? They have certainly come through for you on the track.

MJ: We actually bought 72. I think it was a record number for us and, yes, it's risky but, we had absolutely no choice. If you don't have 2-year-olds, you don't have 3-year-olds and, if you don't have 3-year-olds, you don't have older horses. When a yard goes through major fluctuations, like in the past when we were dominated by Darley horses, when they changed their policy it had a big impact on us. When things level out, a yard like ours would usually be made up of 50% 2-year-olds.

BS: I looked back through all of your juvenile winners this season to see what they cost as yearlings. The majority were purchased at 50,000gns or less–some even cost a fraction of that. Can you tell me a bit about the criteria you look for when buying yearlings?

MJ: What you need to remember is that 95% of those horses are bought on spec so we have to be willing to pay for them ourselves which means we can't go out and buy 200,000gns yearlings. We would end up only having five of them if we did that. We've had no choice but to operate at that end of the scale. I'm always explaining to people that these are not the 72 yearlings I wanted the most, but they are the ones I could afford and there's a big difference in that.

I also think we have suffered somewhat in that I have been labelled as a trainer who buys faults. Sometimes we see things at the sales that we wouldn't accept and they still make hundreds of thousands of pounds so maybe I'm only a little more forgiving of things than most but perhaps I'm more forgiving of different things to others. Understandably, an agent has to be able to justify things to an owner so they would be put off by the simple things like toeing in or out, which isn't actually going to have any effect on a horse's ability and little or no impact on it's soundness.

We use things like that as an opportunity to buy a cheaper horse. I say 'we' all the time because it's very much a joint effort between myself and Charlie. We are working on the same criteria in that we're pretty strict on our pedigrees. The mare has to have been rated at least 90, and, or produced something rated at least 90, so we're not buying first foals out of moderate mares. You mentioned that some of those 72 yearlings were quite cheap but, if you looked at all of the pedigrees, nobody would be saying any one of the horses we bought was a freak if it went on to win a Classic. It's there in its pedigree and it has the potential to be a black-type horse.

Interestingly, my vet John Martin sent me an analysis he did on last year's yearling sales. We used to only look at X-rays if we saw something visible on a horse that might be of concern and then we'd check it out. We didn't routinely look at X-rays, even if we were buying at Book 1. However, with so many X-rays being available, we started looking at everything that was on our list. I was getting a feeling during the sales that I wasn't liking this approach–I felt I was missing out on what were good horses because the vets queried things on the X-rays.

John Martin noted that, of the ones he found issues with on the X-rays, one went to the breeze-ups and made a very large profit and there are a couple more that we rejected but they have achieved decent Timeform ratings. That's quite an eye-opener. We're going to delve further but it looks like our old policy was the right one. We're not at the sales to buy a set of clean X-rays–we're there to buy a racehorse.

BS: On that basis, I can only assume a lot of good horses have been turned down by America and Hong Kong because of bad X-rays.

MJ: No end of them. And you get trainers who are forever scoping, blood sampling and listening to hearts. We have an attitude to training that we don't look for a problem that is not there. We only use all of those aids when there is an issue. That used to be our policy at the sales and, although we are only in July, we can already see that we missed a couple of good horses because we looked at their X-rays. We'd have bought them if we hadn't.

BS: So there's truth to that famous saying that you coined…

MJ: I've said it all my life, a Ferrari with flat tyres will still beat a Mini with Pirellis. While soundness is vitally important, we all know how to buy sound horses, and that's by buying slow ones. You don't have to worry about keeping them sound as they will just go slow. The first objective should be to buy a fast horse. Then you can worry about how you're going to train it.

BS: You mentioned that you place a lot of emphasis on what the dams have achieved on the track or as a broodmare but, do you place as much importance on the stallion and are there many that you simply wouldn't touch?

MJ: There are very few. With unproven sires, I like them to be Group 1 winners and I don't tend to buy progeny out of unproven sires who didn't.

BS: That has been an approach that has worked well for you. Gleneagles (Ire) was a young stallion that you supported at the Sportsman's Sale last year when you bought Dornoch Castle (Ire) for €30,000 and he has emerged as one of your best 2-year-olds.

MJ: Those sorts of horses are right up my street and I'm a big fan of sons of Galileo (Ire). There's this myth that Galileo is not a sire of sires. Did they not say the same thing about Sadler's Wells for years and years? Then what happened? He was succeeded by his own son. It has already happened with Galileo, in that Frankel (GB) is his son, and I'm always looking at sons of Galileo, especially middle-distance-winning sons. They are very cheap for what they are.

BS: What will be the plan for Dornoch Castle. Would it be too early to predict how good he is?

MJ: The plan is for him to run in the G2 Vintage S. at Goodwood next week and, yes, it's too early to start predicting how good he can be. We had a couple of bubbles burst last weekend with Crackovia (GB) (Cracksman {GB}) and Killybegs Warrior (Ire) (Saxon Warrior {Jpn}) getting beaten. Lion Of War (GB) (Roaring Lion) was another one. Obviously we think Dornoch Castle is bloody useful. It took me two or three runs to realise how good Attraction (GB) was and Shamardal is probably one of the only horses that I knew was definitely a group horse before I ran him.

BS: And how is Lion Of War after his Newmarket effort? Would it be fair to say he just didn't handle the track?

MJ: I don't know to be honest. I haven't had a chance to talk to Cieren [Fallon] or David Redvers about it. It was a funny race and was run very differently to the two that he had won before that. He has come out of it fine and we'll just have to go back and try again.

BS: I assume you will be active at Arqana next month. Have you started dipping into the catalogue as of yet or what way do you apprach it?

MJ: No, I haven't. When I started out, that criteria with the mares started off with ratings of 70, then it became 75 and it gradually crept up to 90. I rarely look beyond the first dam. I just look at the sire and dam. We have a team that does research for us beforehand and we use Equineline and the Wetherbys ratings book. Then our own team looks at updates or ratings that may not be available. When I am presented with my catalogue with all of that information in it just a few days before the sale, I can go through it very quickly. Charlie and I go through the catalogue independently and we compare our lists. We will debate something that is on one list and not on the other and then we arrive with a final list of horses to go and view. Basically, if they are not on that list, we are not going to buy it no matter how good it looks when we see it at the sale.

BS: That sounds to me that you approach the sales the same way as you approach training in that it is quite a streamlined process. You like to keep things simple.

MJ: Absolutely. Let's say we go to Book 1 at Tattersalls and there's 300 horses on our list, we'll probably follow 280 or more of those horses into the ring, particularly at that sort of sale. The percentage would be smaller at other sales. But there will be very few horses on our list that we'd say we're not going to buy at any price. There might be something we don't like but we'll still follow it into the ring and there have been many good horses come our way down through the years by adopting this method. I always joke about the Cadeaux Genereux (GB) colt I bought in 1994. Of all the yearlings I bought that year, he was the one I'd have happily given back, but he turned out to be Bijou D'inde (GB). There have been several examples of that down through the years where, we didn't love the horse as a physical, but we bought them because they were cheap and had a fantastic pedigree. That's why we're always standing at the rope–we're just bidding on so many.

BS: I was reading the Bletherings column on your website today. There have been a few more entries in recent months. I couldn't help but notice you said the unnamed trainer who orchestrated the boycott at Newbury last week was deserving of a medal.

MJ: I have been a trainer for 30 years and some people will say that I am always moaning but we are reaching a critical point now. Things have been brought to a head with the death of Sheikh Hamdan al Maktoum and Khalid Abdullah. Along with Sheikh Mohammed, they have basically propped British racing up for the past 30 years. We saw the news yesterday that Juddmonte sold a Britannia winner to Hong Kong. It's not many years ago that it would be an Arab owner buying a Britannia winner to race in Britain, not the other way around. I think we are in a serious position. Prize-money is critical. Look at what the Japanese have done recently. I have always admired them as they have always been there but, to turn up, almost en masse in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and where all the big money was, and to dominate, it was fantastic for them. We can't just assume that we will always have the best racing and the best bloodstock in Britain because we only have it because the big owners were willing to keep the best stock and the best stallions here. There are just far too many leaving at the moment.

BS: I had a good chat with a top-tier trainer in Ireland recently who described themselves as a pre-trainer for the foreign market and how disheartening it is becoming to see the yard's best prospect being exported season after season given the lack of opportunities for listed/Group 3 horses.

MJ: With Subjectivist (GB) (Teofilo {Ire}) on the sidelines, Royal Patronage (Fr) (Wootton Bassett {GB}) was the highest-rated horse in my yard, but I've just lost him now to America. He hasn't been sold but his owners decided to move him to America because he can win a lot more prize-money there. It's very sad. I don't blame them, of course, but at the same time, I don't want to lose those types of horses from my yard.

BS: It must be hard to contend with that.

MJ: It's impossible to contend with it. I have been very lucky in my early career in that owners turned down what seemed like a lot of money for Mister Baileys (GB) (Robellino) and Double Trigger (Ire) (Ela-Mana-Mou {Ire}). Sheikh Mohammad kept a lot of horses with me as well. But I keep saying to owners, nobody wants to sell when a horse is on the way up and nobody wants to buy when the horse is on the way down. So often I find myself in a position of pushing owners to sell because I know it will be good for them or that it's going to be their best opportunity to get a lot of money. There's me shooting myself in the foot by recommending those horses are moved on and it's not nice. As a nation, we can't go on like that.

BS: If I was to finish on a positive note, Goodwood takes place next week and I know it's a meeting close to your heart.

MJ: Charlie has been doing a huge amount of the entries and placing of horses lately. I have been looking at nice races York or Newmarket and places like that but Charlie has been saying no, that we need these horses on the team for Goodwood. He's very committed and wants to bring a good team to Goodwood. The fact that there's been so much publicity about the fact we have done so well there, it puts the spotlight on us a little bit and the pressure is on to perform next week.