2020 Mark Johnston Stable Tour featuring Elarqam, Raffle Prize, Thunderous and Communique

It's been a challenging time but the main priority is that everyone is fit and healthy and thankfully we’re in good form. We’re maintaining business as usual as much as we can. This is not a business we can press pause on and come back to in three weeks. We can’t just lock the doors and leave the horses be, they still need to be fed and they still need to exercise.

We need to be prepared and to have our squad in as good a shape as possible when racing resumes. It’s obviously hugely disappointing, there are already some quite significant meetings and races that have fallen by the wayside.

For a team that’s always striving to better ourselves and to break records – having posted such a fantastic number of winners last year, we’ve spent the winter working and dreaming of breaking those numbers again. Obviously that’s very unrealistic now.

That will all pale into insignificance if we can get back racing some time soon and still have a season of some consequence because the opposite side of the coin, if we don’t get racing until much further down the line, has huge implications for our owners, our business and the current crop of horses.

Our Friends in the North - Charlie Johnston

Stable Star: Elarqam

Horse to Follow: Visinari

Handicapper to Follow: Overwrite

Older horses

Blown By Wind

He got himself down to a good mark and then destroyed in one fell swoop when winning at Musselburgh towards the end of the season and went up from 90 to 100.

He’s a horse I’ve always thought had more ability than he’d really shown. He was a very capable two-year-old but never really went on as I’d hoped he would. But he’s stayed in training and I know he’s got the potential and the ability to be competitive in some really good races.

Communique

He’s another one who had been planned to go for exactly the same races he did last year, to start in the Geoffrey Freer then try to defend his crown in the Jockey Club at Newmarket. That's not happening as we'd hoped so races like the Coronation Cup will be on the agenda with some luck.

He’s still going strong and he’s a dual Group Two winner but just struggled to make the step up to the very highest level. Realistically, that may be the case again but if he can win two more Group Twos then that’ll be another successful campaign.

Dee Ex Bee

He’s supposed to be coming back to us but obviously he’s stuck in Dubai at the moment, he’s unable to travel.

It didn’t work out as they’d planned for him over the winter, hopefully that’s had no lasting effects on him and we can pick up where we left off.

Mr Nielsen (owner of Stradivarius) keeps talking about sending his horse in a slightly different direction, I wish he’d hurry up and do it! Our horse would have won the 'Triple Crown' last year if it wasn’t for him. We kept banging our head against that brick wall but that kind of competition is what racing is all about, despite getting beat we were happy to keep going back and take him on again.

Fingers crossed he comes back in one piece and races like the Ascot Gold Cup and Goodwood Cup will all be under consideration.

Elarqam

He’s our highest-rated horse in the yard and because of his pedigree and his back-story he’s always been a flag-bearer for the yard and had by far his best season last year. He ran very well at Royal Ascot and obviously in the Juddmonte, and in between had that impressive win in the Sky Bet York Stakes.

It’s interesting, it’s been talked about a lot down the years that York may not be our most successful track but for Elarqam he seems to save his best for York. So I think his mid-summer will revolve around the Sky Bet York Stakes and the Juddmonte International again.

He was arguably slightly unlucky when third in the Juddmonte last year, being beaten only three quarters of a length. That’ll be his main target for the year.

King’s Advice

We went to Saudi Arabia with him, the money on offer was astronomical and we felt we had to roll the dice with him. He hadn’t really run up to scratch in his prep race at Kempton so we went out there knowing our fate to some degree.

It’s going to be a tough year for him, this time last year he was rated 71 and he’s now going to have to run in Group races and it’s a different kettle of fish. Horses aren’t all that intelligent but they can get into winning habits and that’s what that horse did.

But when you get out of the winning habit it can be hard to rediscover it again. But he’s had a little bit of relief from the handicapper and hopefully he’ll get some more. Another tilt at the Sky Bet Ebor might be the kind of race we’d be looking at longer-term.

Lucky Deal

He’s still in training and he’s just come back into full work after quite a while off. He’s a horse, through setback and injury, that hasn’t quite fulfilled his potential yet but he’d have been starting off in something like the Musselburgh Edinburgh Gold Cup so the top staying handicaps would be the target for him.

Masham Star

Masham Star is great – no stable tour is complete without him and it’d take a lot more than a global pandemic to stop him! He’s in good order.

Matterhorn

The intention was for him to come back to us as well but I’m not sure that will be the case now after his performance the other week. Obviously he’d have been a good candidate for the Dubai Gold Cup and I’ll imagine they’ll keep him out there and campaign him towards that next spring again.

Mildenberger

Horses like him for example, we’d spent all winter campaigning towards all-weather finals day – there’s a good programme now built around the Good Friday meeting at Lingfield.

Part of the more recent success with him should be attributed to Franny Norton who has just changed slightly the tactics on the horse, in not making the running on his last few starts. That’s obviously not really the norm for our horses and Franny has found the horse to travel better, and to finish his races a lot stronger, just being ridden with slightly more restraint.

I was looking at that all-weather final at Lingfield as a bit of a match between him and Rainbow Dreamer, who had beaten us at Kempton. I couldn’t see much else of that level in the field. So it’s been a frustrating beginning to the winter, he wasn’t really fulfilling the potential I thought he might have, but his last two starts were impressive and he’s just starting to come good.

The plan was Lingfield and then possibly something like the Sagaro Stakes or Henry II at Sandown so at the moment those options are out of the window. We’ll have to make a plan when we’ve got a better idea of what’s going to happen.

Nayef Road

He was actually just about on his way to the airport the other weekend, due to run in the Dubai Gold Cup at Meydan, but that got called off. So he was on the go early and had been working very well, we’ve been very happy with him.

Sadly that plan’s gone west. You couldn’t be 100% certain he’d stay but he’s shown a good level of form over a mile and six furlongs. We’d have been looking at the Sagaro or something to see if he had the stamina to make up into a Cup horse. I couldn’t be certain but I’d be hopeful he might be another string to our bow in the division.

Sir Ron Priestley

He’s a real staying type. He’s another who had a small setback this spring so he wouldn’t have been going for the Henry II or the Sagaro anyway. I think we’ll be seeing him mid-season and hopefully aim towards something like the Goodwood Cup.

He won the March Stakes at Goodwood last year. Obviously he hasn’t gone beyond a mile and six furlongs yet but I’ll be pretty confident he’ll stay two miles-plus.

Vale Of Kent

He was a star last year, he won the Bunbury Cup and very nearly won the Golden Mile at Goodwood. He’s rated well into the 100s and he’s probably got into that limbo where he could run for 25,000 in Listed races or run for 100,000 in the top handicaps under top weight.

But he’s very, very capable over seven furlongs and a mile and the handicapper will dictate where he goes.

Three-year-olds

Motion

She’s an unraced three-year-old daughter of Attraction – by Invincible Spirit. We had a difficult year with her in 2019 and a few setbacks, something she has in common with her mother in that she hasn’t been the most straightforward to train so far. But hopefully also in common with her mother, she has some ability. We’ve had a clean run with her this spring and she’s working nicely. She’ll be ready to roll as soon as racing comes along and is one we’re hugely looking forward for her owner-breeders.

Mrs Bouquet

She didn’t run again after she won at Goodwood last year. It was a frustrating one as she had some really bad ringworm around September and as a result she missed the Listed race fillies at Ayr that she was supposed to run in. We had been planning to start her off in the five furlong Listed race at Bath in the third week in April so that would have been the sort of place she’d have been starting.

My Friend Stan

He’s only just started cantering and I don’t know much about him but we’ve got him from Ireland and hopefully he can rate a little bit higher later in the season.

Overwrite

I’m quite looking forward to seeing this horse, who had three runs as a two-year-old last year. He got considerably better with each one of them, he was quite disappointing first time out then finished second at Chester. He then won by six lengths at Brighton towards the back end, and he’s the sort of horse I could see progressing through the ranks.

Praxeology

We’ve had him gelded which I hope will help him, he could be a little bit hot last year as a two-year-old and he seemed the ideal candidate for gelding. It might bring a bit more out of him as a three-year-old and he’s fit and basically ready to run.

Raffle Prize

She’s exactly the type of horse that the current situation we’re in is most difficult for. The Guineas would have been just under four weeks away but won't be staged then. She’s going to have to really start stepping up through the gears at some point but until we have some knowledge if, when or where the Guineas may be run it's not easy.

That is still her prime target. There’s an air of ‘Attraction’ about her in that she’s shown high-level form at six furlongs and there’s no guarantee that she’ll stay the mile on pedigree. But she’s certainly grown quite a lot and look a lot more like a miler than she did four months ago. She’s a lot taller and leaner than she was as a two-year-old.

Even if she is going to be a six furlong horse, as we’ve seen last year with the likes of Advertise and Ten Sovereigns, there really is no other race for her to go for in the first two months of the season. It’s all about the Guineas for those types of horses and if you have to drop back a bit later on in the year you can do that when the time comes.

Thunderous

Frustratingly, he’s had two setbacks, the first of which was straight after the Washington Singer. That’s why he didn’t run again last year.

And then he’s had another one this spring, he’s just been down at the equine hospital in Newmarket as he’s had a stress fracture in his cannon bone. We had been hoping he was a possible for some of the big races, he had Guineas entries and Derby entries - all the fancy entries.

But his setback will put us back into the second half of a ‘normal’ season, who knows what races will fit in where but he was unbeaten at two and I’d be fairly confident at a mile and a quarter he’ll get better and better. He's not one we'll see in the short term but is an exciting horse to look forward to further down the line.

Visinari

It’s a bizarre situation with a horse like that as he was placed in a July Stakes and fourth in the Richmond Stakes on his second and third starts, and everyone in the media was underwhelmed and disappointed.

The expectation of the horse was set very high after his debut. He showed so much speed and on the clock did such a fantastic time over six furlongs at Newmarket, but if you look at him at home he screams to you ‘mile-plus’, he’s probably one of the biggest horses in the yard.

He’s very long and doesn’t look like a sprinter, so it’ll be interesting to see where we start him. I’d have guessed it’ll be over seven furlongs or a mile. He’s so lightly raced and hopefully there’s still plenty more to come.

Two-year-olds

With the two-year-olds in particular it really has been business as usual. The older horses we’ve backed off slightly in the last couple of weeks, they’re still in full work and still cantering every day but they’re not doing any fast work until we have some clarity and have some targets in mind for them.

We’ve around 130 two-year-olds and only around 10% of those would have been racing before May 1 anyway so they still have a lot of educational steps to go through at this time of the year, irrespective of there being no racing.

So they’ve still been doing all the stalls work and all the galloping. We had our first two-year-olds galloping on grass just the other week, so that side of things we’ve still been able to continue as normal.

We’ve a nice bunch of two-year-olds including Twilight Lucy, a half-sister to Mrs Bouquet who did really well for us at two at the end of last year. She’s a Twilight Son filly owned by Nick Bradley and I think the dam (Riva Royale) has now produced four black type fillies, hopefully Mrs Bouquet will make that five before too long.

She came into us quite late and has only just started cantering but it’s a good family and we’re glad to have another one from it.

Also in the series...

• Richard Fahey Stable Tour
• David O’Meara Stable Tour
• Kevin Ryan Stable Tour
• Karl Burke Stable Tour
• Tim Easterby Stable Tour
• Michael Dods Stable Tour
• Jedd O'Keeffe Stable Tour
• John Quinn Stable Tour
• Brian Ellison Stable Tour
• Ben Haslam Stable Tour
• Phil Makin Stable Tour