Mark Johnston

ON a single piece of paper, the colours swirl in the kind of code Bletchley Park’s scientists might have spent months trying to crack during the Second World War.

Mark Johnston is the master code-breaker, and, at a glance, he scans the list of green, yellow and red and knows the traffic lights tell him what every single one of his horses is doing.

That sheet is the key to his Kingsley House operation.

Johnston likes organisation. He wasn’t happy with racing’s traditional structure of trainer, assistant trainer, head lad and down through the regiment.

So he changed it, and has been reaping the rewards ever since.

Jurassic Park was Britain’s most watched film, and Take That had just notched their first number one, the last time the Middleham trainer failed to record a century of Flat winners in a season. 1993 seems a lifetime ago.

But, when your two yards house around 230 horses and your top performers are pulling in millions of prize money every year, you have to do things differently.

If organisation is important, so is responsibility. If you work for Johnston, expect there to be no hiding place.

“The yard is divided into eight sections, with eight yard managers. No yard manager has got more than 30 horses. They all report to me. It’s all about having systems so they can’t get it wrong, so they know exactly what’s expected of them and so I get all the information,” Johnston explains.

“On a daily basis I get a colour sheet. At a glance I can see exactly what every horse in the yard is doing. A green square tells me it is in full work, cantering and galloping, yellow is walking and trotting. Red means it didn’t go out.

“All I have to do, every day, is take a ruler and run down the list and I look for any abnormalities. I get that in advance so I can see on an afternoon what they are suggesting the horses should do the next day.

“I can flick down that and I see immediately horses changing from green to yellow, horses changing from yellow to red and, where it shouldn’t do, look into it.”

That’s not all.

Like a general, Johnston gets constant updates from the front. His officers send reports every evening on how the infantry are doing. He gets a written report on every single horse.

“They have high levels of responsibility. That’s the important thing,” he added.

“We used to have the traditional structure of trainer, assistant trainer, head lad, assistant lad and it was just an opportunity to pass the buck. When something was wrong, they could pass it up or down.

“Now I say ‘the yard manager is responsible for everything’. They answer directly to me. There is no hiding. No matter who did something wrong on his team, the yard manager carries the can.

“The yard manager is expected to know all the horses, know where they have been, where they are going and what they are doing. So if I want to know anything about any horse in the yard, it’s a one-stop shop. I go to the yard manager and they should be able to tell me.”

Johnston wants winners. But more than that, he wants prize money. In the best case scenario, the two go hand in hand.

He revealed: “We are very big on targets. I like to set targets. I like to set targets for the individual yards managers to have as well. Our target this year is 169 winners with £2.3 million in prize money.

“We try to put more emphasis on prize money in targets now because, simply, the prize money situation is so bad in Britain and the costs of training for the owners are going up so much.

“I want to avoid the danger of the yard managers feeling we should be chasing a numbers target and want to send a horse to Lingfield in the middle of winter on its own to win £1,500 – which is just not sensible. We have to understand that prize money is the more important target.”

Johnston also understands the bigger picture.

With more than 100 of his horses owned by the Maktoum family – the rulers of Dubai – the best may start life with Johnston but, if they have Classic ability, they are shipped to Newmarket to join the Godolphin operation.

Shamardal, the best horse Johnston reckons he’s ever trained went that way, and Shaweel – last year’s Gimcrack Stakes winner – has followed suit.

He’s being lined up for a tilt at the 2,000 Guineas in just under a fortnight but, if he takes the prize, no-one will be happier than Johnston.

“Obviously, we have a lot of horses in the yard that are not owned by the Maktoums and I dearly hope that we get Classic winners from those,” he states.

“But for the 50 per cent of the yard that belongs to the Maktoum family, the reason I have got so many horses is because I see the bigger picture. Perhaps some trainers haven’t been able to understand and so they are no longer in the team.

“On Shamardal, Keith Dalgleish rode it in its last gallop before it ran. He didn’t say a lot on the gallops but he said ‘the only question with this horse is where do you want it to win, because it will win wherever you take it’. That was Shamardal.

“He won his maiden at Ayr first time out and then won the Vintage Stakes at Goodwood and he then won the Dewhurst before going to Godolphin, where he won a further three Group 1s. He was the best horse I’ve ever trained. In his year, I thought he was unbeatable.

“I don’t know what the plans for the horses are at Godolphin but I was in Dubai recently and I saw Simon Crisford (Godolphin’s racing manager) and there was mention that Shaweel may go to the English Guineas.

“I hope he does and I hope he wins.”