Trainer Mark Johnston
Mark Johnston: Celebrated his 5000th winner on Wednesday

Mark Johnston becomes the first to train 5,000 winners in Britain


John Ingles charts Mark Johnston's career after Britain's most successful trainer reached the milestone of 5,000 winners with Dubai Mile at Kempton on Wednesday.

It all began with a two-year-old named Hinari Video. His win in a maiden at Carlisle in July 1987 set the ball rolling for Mark Johnston in a training career characterised by a relentless pursuit of winners. So successful has Johnston been in that quest that he has now reached the landmark total of 5,000. Only two other British trainers, Martin Pipe and Richard Hannon senior, have trained as many as 4,000 winners.

Hinari Video was the sole winner for Johnston in 1987 when he began his career training from a small yard near the Lincolnshire coast. When he and wife Deirdre began training from Middleham soon afterwards, their operation was still on a modest scale, with only 15 horses, but the string grew rapidly along with the annual tally of winners which increased every year until 1994.

RACING NEW - DELETE

In that year, Johnston reached a century of winners for the first time (117), the most significant of those being Mister Baileys who became his trainer’s first Group 1 winner when successful in the 2000 Guineas. The stable’s annual total has never dropped below three figures since and, in fact, a double century has become the norm for what has developed into one of the country’s biggest Flat strings.

It was in 2009 that Johnston became the first Flat trainer in Britain to saddle 200 winners in a calendar year (216) and he hit a double century for the tenth time in 2021. Johnston’s best ever annual domestic total was achieved in 2019 with 249 winners, regaining a record which he’d temporarily lost to Hannon and Richard Fahey who’d both reached 235 in a year. Johnston’s total also surpassed the record for the most wins in a single British season, Flat or jumps, which was set by Pipe with a total of 243 in the 1999/2000 jumps season.

When two-year-old Double Honour won a maiden at Hamilton in September 2000, he not only became Johnston’s 1,000th winner on the Flat in Britain (he has trained five winners over jumps) but it also resulted in Johnston breaking Henry Cecil’s record and becoming the fastest trainer to reach that landmark. Each of Johnston’s successive thousand winners thereafter came at ever quicker intervals, with winner number 2,000 achieved by Leamington at Southwell in February 2008, Birdy Boy taking him to 3,000 at Wolverhampton in April 2013 and Dominating becoming his 4,000th Flat winner in the Phil Bull Trophy at Pontefract in October 2017.

But of all the thousands of winners Johnston has trained, including those this year when son Charlie has officially become joint licence-holder at Kingsley Park, none was perhaps as historically significant as winner number 4,194. That was Poet’s Society, ridden by Frankie Dettori, who registered his sixth win of the year in the Clipper Logistics Handicap at York’s Ebor meeting in 2018. That made Johnston the most successful trainer in British racing history by number of winners.

Unlimited Replays

of all UK and Irish races with our Race Replays

Discover Sporting Life Plus Benefits

Very few trainers have held that record. Arthur Stephenson became the most successful trainer numerically in the modern era in 1992, breaking a record which had lasted since the days of another jumps trainer, Arthur Yates, in the nineteenth century. Martin Pipe passed Stephenson’s total in 2000, while Hannon overtook Pipe in 2013 before he handed over his licence to son Richard junior the following season. Hannon is the only other trainer, besides Johnston, to have trained more than 4,000 winners on the Flat – 4,145 to be precise - in addition to 48 over jumps.

While Hannon took over his Wiltshire yard from his own father – unlike Johnston, who had no family background in racing but practiced as a vet after university – he too started training on a modest scale with fewer than a dozen horses, half of them jumpers. Another point in common between both trainers is that they each owe much of their success to auction purchases, and often not particularly expensive ones.

For all his success, though, unlike Pipe and Hannon senior, Johnston has never been champion trainer, a title decided by prize money. The closest he has come was when runner-up to Sir Michael Stoute in both 2003 and 2006, but if it was decided by number of wins instead, Johnston would have won his 15th championship in 2021!


More from Sporting Life


Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.

Like what you've read?

Next Off

00:02:38
11 Runners, 1m 110y
Going: Firm
Surface: Turf
5
(5)
Horse silk
J: Jose Ortiz
T: Ignacio Correas
10
(10)
Horse silk
J: Florent Geroux
T: Rob Atras
8
(8)
Horse silk
J: Ben Curtis
T: Michael Stidham
Follow & Track
Image of a horse race faded in a gold gradientYour favourite horses, jockeys and trainers with My Stable
Log in
Discover Sporting Life Plus benefits

Most Followed

Horse silk

Joyeux Machin

F: FP-7053

T: D Skelton

Horse silk

Jackie Hobbs

F: 1-1

T: Harry Derham

Horse silk

Pic D'Orhy

F: 1/121P-1

T: P F Nicholls

Horse silk

Terresita

F: 31F-131

T: L Wadham

Horse silk

Altobelli

F: 9/230-21

T: H Fry