Mark Johnston

Speaker 40:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the racehorse trainer Mark Johnston. A lynchpin of British flat racing, he has more British winners to his name than any trainer in history. His 300-acre training yard currently has 280 horses and an internationally recognised reputation for excellence, and it runs on a system he devised, which was revolutionary in British horse racing. It's a far cry from his early days. Back then, he was a vet with three and a half paid-up horses and a dubious patch of training ground on a beach that doubled as an MOD bombing range. The first time he and Deirdre, his wife and business partner, took a horse to Newmarket, they were such outsiders that they ate their pre-race picnic in the car park, though the experience was made a lot sweeter when they took home first place. He's been running winners ever since. In August 2018, when 20 to 1 shot Poets Society, ridden by Frankie DiTori, straight to victory at York, Mark became the most prolific winning trainer in British racing history, saddling 4,194 winners. He says, I have never been content, never been someone who's been satisfied to have his life mapped out and know where he was going, what his wages were going to be, what his pension was going to be. I've never been content with my lot. I always want more. Mark Johnston, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Mark Johnston2:07

Thank you. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time and really looking forward to it.

Presenter2:13

We're speaking in the week that racings returned after it was suspended in March because of the coronavirus lockdown. What's the mood like in the yard today?

Mark Johnston2:22

The mood's great, yeah. It's uh it's fantastic to be back. It's been a a long time of sort of ticking over and training horses with uh no target in mind, so we're all delighted to be back doing it.

Presenter2:35

You've had tremendous successes in your career and you've broken many records, but you still want more, you're still forward-focused and looking ahead.

Mark Johnston2:43

Um I think so, yeah. It was once said to me that it's a a Scottish trait that we're driven more by the fear of failure than the the goal of success, and uh I think that probably does apply to me, that I'm always frightened to take my foot off the pedal for fear that things will start to snowball backwards.

Presenter3:02

And how important is it for you to be such a significant part of this long history of horse racing?

Mark Johnston3:09

I suppose I never imagined that I would be part of it or a big part of it. I didn't come from a racing background. I didn't really know how to get into racing. It was unthinkable for me as a teenager to think that I would brush shoulders with the likes of Sir Michael Stout. I couldn't simply imagine socialising with him or staying in his house, or Joe Mercer, who was the champion jockey at the time, staying in my house. Although I was determined and I believed that I could get to the top, I don't know if I really thought it would happen.

Presenter3:47

It's time for your first disc, Mark. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen this for us?

Mark Johnston3:51

In my very early teens, or maybe just before I reached my teens, I'd already started listening to music, but I wasn't really buying records yet. But I decided that I should have a group that I followed and that I was a fan of, and I chose Slade. And that has remained to this day. The song we're going to hear, Get Down and Get With It, not actually a Slade song, but a song they covered. And it's the ringtone on my phone, so I thought quite appropriate.

Speaker 44:23

Out of it.

Speaker 44:25

Put your head down.

Speaker 44:28

Wanna say everybody get above the seat, clap your hands, stamp your feet, get down, get with it. I said I've get down, get with it.

Speaker 44:37

Through the drive.

Speaker 44:40

Come on, baby!

Speaker 44:43

I'm on whatever I worth!

Speaker 44:46

I said I'm on baby man

Speaker 44:49

Watch everybody do the thing!

Presenter4:52

Slade and get down and get with it. Mark Johnston You are unsentimental, you say, about the animals that you work with. You love their functionality, the functionality of racehorses, which is a fascinating idea. What do you mean by that?

Mark Johnston5:06

The fact that I'm not sentimental about them doesn't mean I don't care about them. And the thoroughbred breed which has evolved into the most wonderful running machine, the most athletic animal on the planet perhaps, that's very, very important to me. I love looking at animals that are fit for a purpose.

Presenter5:25

I know that you trained a Philly called Attraction, who won several prestigious races the Thousand Guinea Stakes at Newmarket, the Sun Chariot Stakes, and the Coronation Stakes as well. But when she came to you, I think not much was expected of her. Why not?

Mark Johnston5:40

Her limbs were sort of offset at the knees, and she had this shuffly gait and a very unusual gait when she was galloping. One foreleg sort of swings out to the side as she galloped.

Presenter5:53

And how quickly did you know she was a winner and how did you turn her into one?

Mark Johnston5:57

My first stable jockey was Bobby Elliott and he rode her in a gallop in April of 2003. She was unnamed at the time and he said this is not half bad, you better get it named quickly. So we did. She won first time out. She won again on her second start. Then she went to Royal Ascot and won a Group 3 race and then to Newmarket and won a Group 2 race. This is all this a two-year-old. After that she fractured a hind pedal bone and there was grave doubts through that winter whether she would come back as a three-year-old and continue to race. So we decided we'd shoot straight for the big one and go straight to the Thousand Guineas at Newmarket.

Presenter6:43

Do you get nervous before big races?

Mark Johnston6:46

I get nervous before big races like that. A lot of owners, and maybe some trainers, seem to get very down in defeat. I don't get that. I'll always feel provided the horse comes back in one piece, there'll be another day. But there's those big races where you really believe you've got the best horse and you'll be disappointed if it comes second. I would feel that I'd done something wrong, and so I was certainly nervous when attraction went to the thousand guineas.

Presenter7:19

Your strategy is this front running style, Mark, and the horses lead the field from the start. Tell me a little bit more about that and the thinking behind that approach.

Mark Johnston7:29

I can honestly say in those four thousand four hundred or five hundred winners that we've had, I have never instructed a jockey to lead the field. You can't dictate where you should sit in the field because you don't know how fast the others are going to be going. The most efficient way to cover the distance in the fastest time is to do it at as near as possible to a constant speed without any extremes of acceleration or braking. For the vast majority of horses, I say just bowl along where it's happy.

Presenter8:06

And I think you've said that it's very important to be aware of the competition. Are you looking at what other people are doing and comparing how you're getting on with them?

Mark Johnston8:14

I hate to admit it, but yes. Yes. I'm forever looking at the statistics. I don't tend to look at individuals in the race and certainly don't employ or ask the jockeys to employ tactics where they focus on individual horses in the race. It's far more in placing the horses in the right race. There's an old saying of keep yourself in the best company and your horses in the worst. You've got to look for the easiest race to win.

Presenter8:44

It's time to get to the music, Mark. Your second disc to day. What is it, and why have you chosen it?

Mark Johnston8:49

Originally I lived in Eastgo Bride, a new town, an overspill town built in the 60s for overspill from Glasgow. And then we moved to Aberfoyle, 20 miles north of Glasgow. Paolo Nuttini, although he's of Italian descent, in his music he sums up Glasgow culture, and particularly this song Pencil Full of Lead.

Speaker 49:11

Oh, I got a sheet for my bed and a pillow for my head I got a pencil full of lead and some water for my throat I got buttons for my coat and sails on my boat So much more than I needed before I got money and a meter and a turbine eater And now it's getting on the road So again, sweet to rather legs on my chairs and a head full of hair Pollard of pan and some shoes on my feet I got a shelf full of books and post on my teeth Two pairs of socks and a door with a lock I got food in my belly Analysis for my telly And nothing's gonna bring me down

Mark Johnston9:26

To rather legs on the jails and a head full of hair

Presenter9:42

Paolo Nettini and pencil full of lead. Mark Johnston, your parents were from Glasgow and you were brought up in East Kilbride on a council estate there. That might seem to be a million miles from the world of racing. Where did your love of the sport come from? Because it did kick in early for you, didn't it?

Mark Johnston10:00

I suppose my love of the sport came from my father. In fact, definitely my love of the sport came from my father. He used to go down to the bookies on a Saturday and he would take me with him. I used to have to stand outside, no children allowed in the bookies, or if it was raining, he would sometimes smuggle me in and I would stand under the shelf while he was putting his bets on. We would then go to my grandmother's house, she also lived in Eastcobride, and watch the televised racing, watch grandstand. And I suppose that's what first got me hooked. But the turning point was when Dad bought a horse and put it in training when I was about fourteen. And he then he also dabbled with breeding horses, buying at the lowest level. I think the first mare he bought was a hundred and ten guineas.

Mark Johnston10:54

and he would send them to cheap stallions and dream of breeding a derby winner. He didn't even breed a selling plate winner, sadly. I often joke that he taught me how not to do it. In fact he certainly did teach me how not to do it, but he passed his passion for it on to me and that's what made me decide at quite an early age that training horses was what I wanted to do, although I didn't really know much about it.

Presenter11:19

And what about your mum? You know, you've said of your parents' relationship, I think my father made the bullets and she fired them. What was she like?

Mark Johnston11:26

I now look back and feel sorry for my mum. I think she held the family together and worked while he flitted from one job to another and one idea to another. But then when I was in my teens, they got quite heavily involved in politics. My mother stood as a parliament unsuccessfully stood as a parliamentary candidate in the 1974 elections.

Presenter11:48

She was a Scottish nationalist.

Mark Johnston11:49

Yeah. And my father never got particularly actively involved in politics, but he was very interested and I always feel that no disrespect to her, but that he was the brains behind it. She would come home and discuss her ideas and discuss what she was going to say with him. And as I say, I feel that he made the bullets and she fired them.

Presenter12:13

The family wasn't wealthy, but your dad did buy horses for your two sisters rather than you, I think. Why not you at first?

Mark Johnston12:21

Perhaps a sexist thing that people always think girls are going to be more into ponies and horses than than boys are. And then when my my sister had the pony, I wasn't allowed to ride it, but I used to climb in through a window in the the shed and pinch the bridle. Couldn't get the saddle out through the window, so I would just take the bridle and take the pony out for a ride and all hell broke loose if I got caught, but uh that's how I learned to ride.

Presenter12:50

I think it's time to hear your next track, Mark. What have you got for us?

Mark Johnston12:54

I grew up very much, spent an awful lot of time with my cousin David. I was at university, he was running a restaurant in Aberfoyle, and David would tape these songs from the radio, and he'd have homemade cassette tapes in his car, and one of them would always start with this Mill Age Old, You May Be Right, and it brings back great memories of those days.

Speaker 413:16

But I made it home alive So you say that only proves that I've been saved You made me right

Speaker 413:28

I may be crazy But it just made me

Speaker 413:34

The lunatic you're looking for

Speaker 413:38

So now for lights!

Speaker 413:41

Don't try to save me.

Speaker 413:44

You may be wrong for all I know, but you may be right

Presenter13:50

Billy Joel, and you may be right. So, Mark Johnston, I think you were an animal person from the beginning. Did you have pets when you were young? I mean, apart from the horses at home, obviously.

Mark Johnston14:00

Yeah, we always had pets. When we were in East Gold Bride, we just had one dog, Toy Poodle. When we moved to Aberfoyle, we had all sorts of pets. A goat I remember we had for a while. And I used to go greyhound racing with my father. I remember arranging to get a retired dog, and then my parents wouldn't let me have it. And eventually, age about 14 I think I was, I got a whippet instead. And somebody told me that there was a lady lived nearby me who kept whippets and that she would teach me about how to show my dog. So I went to see Flora Lindsay. She was actually, although she did show dogs, she was more interested in racing them, which was music to my ears. And I did that quite successfully. It's a very, very pedigree whippet racing, a very amateur sport.

Presenter14:44

Yeah.

Presenter14:51

And what was your training philosophy for the Whippets?

Mark Johnston14:54

The training philosophy was feed them as much as they would eat and work them as hard as they could work, get them super fit. And I got a job in a local hotel, Bailey Nickel Jarvis Hotel in Aberfoyle, washing dishes. And I got the job there so that I could clear the plates and take the steaks off the that the people hadn't eaten off the plates to feed my whippets.

Presenter15:16

It's time for your next piece of music. Tell us about this one.

Mark Johnston15:19

Deirdre and I had quite a tumultuous relationship. It started when she was 14 and I was 17 and she went off to college and a lot of people I suppose would have said that it wouldn't last and this song sort of sums that up. You're Still the One Shania Twain, sung here not by Shania but by our youngest son Angus with Deirdre backing him up.

Speaker 415:47

You're still the one You're still the one I run to The one that I belong to You're still the one I want for life

Speaker 416:01

I'm still the one, still the one that I love, the only one I dream of, still the one I kiss. Good night.

Presenter16:18

You're Still the One, written by Shania Twain and Mutt Lang and performed there by Mark's wife Deirdre and son Angus. Lovely to take their voices to the island, Mark. So Mark, you started studying to be a vet at Glasgow University. How good a student were you, do you think?

Mark Johnston16:34

I was a terrible student. And I think I had resets in in every other year except final year. In final year I passed at the first attempt much to everybody's shock, including mine.

Presenter16:47

After you eventually qualified, you worked as a vet for a few years before deciding that you were going to become a racehorse trainer and you had no connections in the industry, obviously, no track record, no financial backing behind you. Where do you think the chutzpah to go for this long-held dream came from, especially when you got quite a steady job going there and a job that you'd work very hard to get?

Mark Johnston17:10

In a period of three and a half years I had three jobs, but each one of them was just trying to get me closer to a foot in the door with racing stables.

Mark Johnston17:20

Yeah, that was always in the back of my mind.

Presenter17:23

Around this time you married Deirdre. How did you meet? You were she was fourteen, you were seventeen.

Mark Johnston17:28

I think we actually met when she was 10 and I was 13 and her grandparents lived in Aberfoyle. They had died and the family had taken their house for a short period. They kept it as a holiday home. She came out in the summer time to stay at that house which was a couple of hundred yards from my cousin's hotel. And then when she came back at 14 she was already quite into horses and she always says she had a pony and my dad had a field. So that was what brought us together.

Presenter18:04

That was what brought it.

Presenter18:07

Deirdre is a horse lover, obviously. Today she's a director of Johnston Racing. How do you balance the personal with the professional working together over so many years?

Mark Johnston18:17

Looking back, I don't know how anybody could do it without a a partner that that worked in the business. Of the one hundred and twenty five riders, Deergie's a a very, very good rider, so that's an important aspect of it. I certainly could never have done it without her.

Presenter18:33

And I believe horse racing also featured on your wedding day.

Mark Johnston18:37

Yeah, we got married on Oaks Day when Oso Sharp won the Oaks at at Epsom. I listened to it on the radio driving from the church to the reception. So well, we weren't going to miss out even on our wedding day.

Presenter18:51

Priorities. All right, it's time for your fifth disc, Mark. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it?

Mark Johnston18:57

This comes from that, as you say, I described it as a tumultuous relationship with Deirdre while she was at college and I was at university. I think I put this on a cassette tape and sent it to her. I think there's a line in it about not realising it's only the time that was wrong. And I think I was right there, that eventually the time was right and we got back together.

Speaker 419:21

You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that.

Speaker 419:26

Anyway, what you gonna do about it?

Speaker 419:31

Juliet

Speaker 419:33

Ice was loaded from the stars Then I've been

Speaker 419:38

And you exploded in my heart And I forget, I forget

Speaker 419:45

The movie song

Speaker 419:47

When you gonna realize it was just a time was wrong

Speaker 419:53

Juliet

Presenter19:55

ROMEO and JULIET BY DIER STRAITS Mark Johnston, you bought your first yard in Lincolnshire in nineteen eighty six. How would you describe the place when you first took it on?

Mark Johnston20:07

It had been empty for a while. It had been a a a mortgage company repossession. It was a relatively modern house and cheaply built modern yard, but completely overgrown and in need of refurbishment really.

Presenter20:23

What about getting your trainer's licence from the Jockey Club? Was that a straightforward process for you?

Mark Johnston20:28

We'd been trying to get a yard or get somewhere or get a foot in the door for a long time and I'd talked of being a trainer but I didn't really know what it involved. So I phoned the jockey club and I'll never forget the man speaking to me. He was secretary to the licensing committee and I said I'm a vet in practice. And he said to me just because you're a vet doesn't mean to say you can train a horse. I wish I could meet him now. But at least it sort of flagged up to me that it wasn't going to be plain sailing, it wasn't going to be straightforward to get a trainer's licence.

Presenter21:02

Did you have a a sense of not fitting in, of you know, perhaps not having the right background?

Mark Johnston21:08

Oh, very much so. Very, very much so. And the minimum number of horses was twelve. We had twelve horses, but we owned one and a half ourselves, and the rest were borrowed and not fit to run really. I used to think the jockey club will have their spies out watching me taking my horses out to train, and they'll clamp down on me because I don't actually have twelve horses. I thought I'm going to lose this licence, you know, I've only just got it.

Presenter21:34

Uh

Presenter21:38

Where did you train? Where did the horses go on gallops?

Mark Johnston21:41

We trained our horses exclusively on the beach.

Mark Johnston21:44

And that beach was an RAF bombing range, which when you say to people, they don't really grasp the reality of it, but it was a bombing range, and we marked out our gallop along the edge of the the boundary that where you couldn't go on to the the bombing range.

Speaker 221:50

Reality

Presenter21:59

Quite noisy for the horses, though, didn't that bother them?

Mark Johnston22:02

They soon get used to it, it's amazing. You know, the planes would come over very low, they would drop bombs. When Bobby Elliott first came in to ride out, he was getting off one horse, getting on another one when the first bomb went off and he ran for cover. So the people weren't always so calm about it, but as I say, the horses soon got used to it.

Presenter22:17

Yeah.

Presenter22:23

And how similar was your approach to the one that you'd taken with training the dogs?

Mark Johnston22:28

It started off as being fairly similar. Take the horses out twice a day, try and work them harder. My first owner that had committed to us and sent us a horse was Paul Venner. He had a horse feed company which was in its infancy and between us we devised the first racehorse product that he had. I experimented with things like putting Guinness in the feed and then I tried to put fat into the feed and I bought lard and melted it in a pan and poured it on the feed and none of the horses would eat it and so I had lots of crazy ideas like those and we were small, the spotlight wasn't on us and we could afford to make a few mistakes and so we tried things.

Presenter23:13

You can experiment. Um you used to feed the horses at night as well.

Mark Johnston23:17

The tradition in most racing stables is three feeds a day. We went on to four. I just had this idea that grazing animals they should be fed little and as often as possible. And we soon found that these late night feeds, if we fed them very late on at night, that they ate those feeds better than the ones that they got in the middle of the day. And we now have two night men that one works from six to twelve and the other one works from twelve to six and they feed the horses all night.

Presenter23:49

Your first winner came in 1987, Hinari Video at Carlisle. What are your memories of that day? It must have been really special.

Mark Johnston23:58

At the time, the only thing about horse racing on television was the teletext service. So we put the teletext page on with the results and we watched it all night. That was that was the only television we watched. So it's something you you never forget. The thrill of that winner, we thought we've made it.

Presenter24:10

Yeah.

Presenter24:17

It's time for your sixth disc. What's it going to be, Mark, and why have you gone for this one?

Mark Johnston24:21

I knew the bride, Dave Edmonds, could listen to these lyrics day in, day out, on a desert island perhaps.

Speaker 424:29

Well I can see her now in the tight blue jeans Mumming all her money in a record machine Swinning like a top, you should have seen her go Whoa I knew the bride but she used to rock and roll I knew the bride and she used to rock and roll I knew the bride but she used to rock and roll I knew the bride but she used to rock and roll Now a proud daddy only wanna give his little girl a bad

Speaker 424:53

And so we put down a grand on a cozy little love's name.

Presenter24:59

I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll, written by Nick Lowe and performed by Dave Edmonds. Mark Johnston, so that first winner happened for you in 1987. By the following year, you were in bigger premises in Middleham in Yorkshire. And as the business expanded, of course, money pressures increased. I think you've said before, nothing makes you train winners like an overdraft. How much pressure were you under at the time?

Mark Johnston25:23

We had borrowed quite a lot of money from the bank and it was very, very tight. It doesn't seem like a fortune now with the scale of our business, but we owed something approaching 20,000 in VAT and we didn't have any money to pay it. And we were in serious trouble. I think that was the point where we thought it's going to end. And Deirdre's father lent us the money at the time.

Presenter25:52

When it was difficult, where did your self-belief come from, do you think?

Mark Johnston25:57

The fear of failure, as I've said, once you've committed to it, there's not a lot else you can do. We couldn't afford to stop. We had to have runners and we had to have winners.

Presenter26:07

Your first classic winner came in 1994 when Mr Baileys won the 2000 guineas at Newmarket.

Presenter26:14

Was that a game changer? Did things turn around at that point?

Mark Johnston26:17

Yes, it was a game changer, very much a game changer. We could buy another yard and we could keep going, you know, and it was it was onwards and upwards from there. But that was a a very, very sticky period in the early nineties.

Presenter26:30

I mean, there are other tough things to deal with doing what you do. Injuries and deaths of horses among them. That must be very difficult to come to terms with. How do you deal with that side of the job?

Mark Johnston26:40

It's it's very, very difficult. I've never been good at the way of explaining it to people that horses are going to die anyway. It sounds like a very callous way of saying things, but this was very much brought home to me a year or two ago when there was a great deal of debate about fatalities in horse racing. And at the time we were looking at our insurance renewals, and I realised that the insurance premium for a flat racehorse in training and the insurance premium for a year, an unbroken yearling, out in the paddock, is exactly the same. Insurance companies do this based on hard facts. They know that the risks are not all that different.

Presenter27:25

There are those people who believe that horse training and horse racing is not ethically sound. What do you say to their concerns? How do you answer them?

Mark Johnston27:33

Quite simply, it's the same as the debate over meat production and so on. I have a very realist well I believe it's a very realistic view to animal welfare that if people didn't race racehorses, the animals wouldn't exist. That normal for the thoroughbred horse is a stable and three or four square meals a day. That's what they've been bred for, that's when they're happiest, that's when their welfare is controlled, and that's very important to me.

Presenter28:06

It's time for some more music, Mark, What's Next and Why?

Mark Johnston28:09

I get hate mail on occasions, emails, text messages, usually when favourites get beaten and some of them can be quite nasty. And the Dixie Chicks in whatever year it was, the Second Iraq War, the lead singer made a statement, I think somewhere in Britain, at a concert and she said, not everybody from Texas supports the war, we are from Texas and we don't support the war. And they had death threats and it brings everything that happens to us into perspective a bit and this song Not Ready to Make Nice was a bit of a comeback track for them and it just makes me realize that there's people a lot worse off than me in that sense.

Speaker 428:57

I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down, I'm still mad as hell and I don't have time to go round and round and round. It's too late to make it right.

Speaker 429:11

Probably wouldn't if I could Cause I'm mad as hell, can't bring myself to do what it is you think I should I know

Speaker 429:25

You said

Presenter29:28

The Dixie Chicks and Not Ready to Make Nice. Mark Johnston I know that you've been nicknamed Braveheart after the Scottish firebrand William Wallace, and I think one journalist wrote of you, he wouldn't just start an argument in an empty room, he would, if necessary, build that room. Do you enjoy a good row?

Mark Johnston29:47

I can't say I enjoy it, I just sort of feel obliged to do it. I'm quite aware that I'll sometimes argue the case that I don't really believe in just because I feel that somebody has to put that case.

Presenter29:59

What's your management style at work? How would you describe that?

Mark Johnston30:03

I don't think it's my forty. I wanted to train horses, not people. We had a very successful apprentice jockey, Keith Douglish, who's now a very successful trainer. He rode Shamerdahl, a great horse I trained, and he rode him in his last gallop before his first start. Keith said to me, the only question about this horse is where would you like it to win? Because it will win anywhere. That was really unusual because Keith never said much after a gallop. And then I heard recently that Keith said, totally unconnected with that story, he said about me that I never listened to a word he said. He would just be about to open his mouth and I'd be walking off in the other direction. So I'm quite guilty of not maybe giving people as much time as I should.

Presenter30:56

One of the things that you are prepared to have a conversation about and perhaps even a row is the way that racing's marketed as a betting industry rather than as a sport. So I take it that you're not a betting man yourself, then?

Mark Johnston31:08

I'm not, but I've got no objection to betting and I think that the two industries have grown very much together, but I think it's to the detriment of us both that racing is so often marketed purely as a betting medium. We are constantly told that football is the fastest growing betting sport and yet you can watch hours of football coverage on television and never hear the odds or the betting mentioned. To me that's because people bet on their opinions. In football the television coverage promotes opinion and in racing we tend not to do that. We give the suggestion and the image that people should get some information or a tip on a horse and then they should back it instead of having their own opinions. And so often if you say to somebody do you follow horse racing and you'll get a reply saying no I don't bet or I don't gamble. I think that's very sad. I think that both industries could benefit from better marketing of our sport.

Presenter32:19

Just one more disc before we send you to your desert island, Mark. What are we going to hear next, and why have you chosen this for us?

Mark Johnston32:25

I had to have a Fleetwood Mic record. Rumours is one of the greatest albums, if not the greatest album ever, and I think Don't Stop is probably the best track.

Speaker 432:37

Stop thinking about tomorrow. Don't stop.

Speaker 432:42

Love to meet you.

Speaker 432:45

It'll be far

Speaker 432:48

Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

Speaker 433:01

Wanna think about times to come

Speaker 433:05

I'm not proud of the things that you've done.

Presenter33:09

Fleetwood Mac and don't stop your final disc today, Mark Johnston. It's time to cast you away to your island. Can you picture yourself there? How do you think you'll get on?

Mark Johnston33:19

Yeah, I think we've got on very well actually. I've I'm quite looking forward to it. Maybe after a little while you start missing your friends, as we have done during lockdown. But with this music and the book I've chosen, I think there's enough to keep me occupied for quite a while.

Presenter33:36

Speaking of the books, then, you can have the Bible, and the complete works of Shakespeare to help you pass the time on the island, and that book of your choice. What's that going to be?

Mark Johnston33:45

The Count of Monte Cristo, because there's so many changes of character and so many characters in it, that I think I could read it time and time again and get something new out of it each time.

Presenter33:55

What about a luxury item to help make your stay more comfortable?

Mark Johnston33:58

One of our the tools of our trade is a a pair of binoculars. Now there won't be any racing to watch on on the island, but there's so many uses for a good pair of binoculars that I think I get hours of pleasure out of them on the island and I can look for boats going past as well.

Presenter34:15

You'll have your eight disks with you, of course. If they were threatened by the waves, which one would you rush to save?

Mark Johnston34:22

I think it would have to be Fleetwood back, Don't Stop.

Presenter34:25

Mark Johnston, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Mark Johnston34:29

Thank you very much. It's been tremendous and as I say I'm almost looking forward to being on this island.

Presenter34:46

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Mark. It wouldn't surprise me if he spent his time on the island training the seagulls and dolphins to race. We've cast many jockeys and racehorse trainers away over the years, including Jenny Pittman, Peter Scudamore, Dick Francis, Richard Dunwoody and Frankie DiTori, who of course rode Poets Society, Mark's record-breaking winner.

Presenter35:08

In 1999, Sue Lawley sent the trainer Martin Pipe to the island.

Speaker 435:13

You've got at any one time at least a hundred horses can go up to a hundred and fifty, I think, doesn't it?

Speaker 235:17

That's right, I've got lots of horses to look after.

Speaker 435:19

And how many of them d do you own yourself or own a leg of?

Speaker 235:23

Too many, I think. I love buying horses. I'm a very bad seller. Uh I love hanging on to my babies so that I know where they're going to race and what they can do, so that we don't over face them.

Speaker 435:35

And that's the point, isn't it? Because these horses of yours, and this is what you're noted for, are brought to the peak of fitness for these races. I'm I'm sure other trainers would claim that they do the same, but you have a particular approach which is quite a scientific high-tech approach. You every day I mean, describe it to me, you test the horses in all sorts of ways, don't you?

Speaker 235:53

That's right, every day. The first thing we do is check their eyes and nose to make sure they're not running, that they're not running a fever. We take their temperature, we take regular blood tests on all the horses. What do you take blood tests for? To check that they're healthy, fit and healthy, they've got no bugs coming, no coughs or anything like this.

Speaker 436:13

And you also take a a video of their throats sometimes.

Speaker 236:16

Yes, we do what they call as an endoscopy. You can look right down into their throat, you can see how their breathing is, how their muscles are working, and you can go down into their lungs and take samples, see if a horse has broken blood vessels, if he's got any chronic inflammation. And it doesn't hurt them at all. It's much, much simpler than doing humans. So they don't object to being this closely monitored? No, they don't object at all. And it's all for their health and benefit. They swim in a pool, they have a swimming pool, and they have a shower after that where they're washed. In the swimming pool, it's the same as a human swimming pool. Ours is a circular one, but there's a ton of salt in there to help buoyancy and heal any cuts. And they have a shower afterwards and then go in the solarium where they're dried off. And then they get massaged, don't they? They get a rub down and they get the old-fashioned strapping. Of course, it's very stimulating for the muscles to build up one side or the other side. It's very, very good. It gets all the blood flowing. They're happy horses.

Speaker 436:42

They take showers.

Speaker 437:11

Yeah.

Speaker 237:13

Above all, they must be happy, healthy horses, those win races.

Speaker 437:17

And also, you know, you can't beat the facts. What you've done in all of that is you've reduced all the unknowns. Again, it's a very keen calculation.

Speaker 237:26

All of this, isn't it? Basically, we we try and take the guesswork out of training.

Speaker 237:30

Years ago we had a horse called Bonanza Boy. He was going to win, we thought, on the Saturday at Cheltenham and his blood test came through two minutes before decoration time saying he couldn't win. And I was really frustrated. We took him out. A few days later he went down with a virus, an infection, ran a temperature. If we'd run him, he would have lost and he'd been off for two or three months. But I bet you have some quarrels with the owners. They say, why are you pulling my horse out? It was frustrating that day because the owner had a big party going on, but he saw sense and he won next time out. We try and do the best for the horses. Look after the horses first and the owners second, I'm afraid. And then the horses will look after you. And the horses will look after us.

Presenter38:11

Martin Pipe, talking to Sue Lawley in 1999 and you'll find his Desert Island discs on BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the actress Helen McCrory. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 438:37

Hi, I'm Catherine Beauhart and I'm Sarah Keyworth. We're comedians separately and a couple together and we're the host of You'll Do, the podcast that gives you a little insight into perfectly imperfect love. Yeah, forget nights in with this one and hashtag couples goals. We want to know the whys and hows of sticking with the people we love and asking a few of the questions that are meant to help us develop intimacy. So why not give it a listen and subscribe to You'll Do on BBC Sounds.