Charlie Johnson: "Racing's Fixture List Is 'Bloated”

Racing trainer Charlie Johnston, speaking to BOYLE Sports , says there are not enough racehorses in Britain to fill the bloated fixture list, claiming that you could reduce the fixture list by 2000!

The trainer, based in North Yorkshire, has spoken in defence of smaller racecourses like Chepstow and Brighton, claiming they need more support for higher prize money.

Charlie also speaks honestly about the future of Horse Racing and its need for reinvention using a fresh approach, including fewer but more high-quality premier racedays and jockeys making themselves more marketable.

“Not Enough” Horses For “Bloated” Fixtures

In a way, it's almost counterintuitive for me to say cut the fixture list by 400 because when the fixture list is too bloated. The reality is that there are not enough horses to go around, and it becomes easier to find races for horses to win.

We're quite open to travelling from Brighton to Ayr and anywhere in between, and on a daily basis. It's not just at the lower level; there are nowhere near enough good horses to fill the fixture list. If you have a nice mile and a half, mile six 90-95 rated horse, the Ebor is not the only race you’re looking at next weekend.

You’ve got the Lanark Silver Bell at Hamilton, worth £100,000, and there's a £45,000 race at Goodwood there's another one at Newmarket. You could send that horse to five or six different places next weekend.

You have to weigh up whether you want to shoot at the Ebor and be a 66-1 shot or go to Newmarket and be a 7-2 shot.

You Could Reduce The Fixture List By 2000!

There just aren't enough horses to go around. As I say, we probably try to profit from and find those races that have small fields and are weaker. Even though I, as someone who will be gaining from the current system, can see that in the long term, it can only fail.

You could have reduced the fixture list by 2000 rather than two. This goes back to the power the racecourses have. There was a card at Chepstow this week (August 14), with six races and total prize money of £40,000. That is less than £7,000 a race. I don’t make an entry at that fixture. What's the point of it?

Chepstow runs one of these meetings every week, as does Brighton, and they're making no effort to increase the prize money. If I was the BHA, I'd just say, ‘No.’

There'll be trainers out there that will think it's easy for you with your big string. But if you have a seven-furlong horse rated 60, you could run it somewhere different every day. There's a race for them every day. To my mind, cards like that should just be gone.

Smaller Racecourses Need Rewarding!

I don't need to look inside the finances of racecourses to see which are trying to do their best and which are not. It always frustrates me when I hear Chelmsford is trying to get more fixtures and they can't.

It’s a track that runs all its races way above minimum values, generally has above-average prize money, and they can't get as many meetings as they want. You have tracks like Brighton and Chepstow that have one every week.

I just feel that those tracks that are at a much lower level, trying to grab onto York’s coattails and push things in the right direction, should be rewarded, and those showing no interest in doing so will just take the fixtures away from them. Hopefully, that is the sort of power that Lord Allen has.

Racing Needs Reinvention!

A lot of media feels they have dumb racing down to make it appealing. I think that's pretty simple as it is; whichever one crosses the line first wins. You only have to look now at football and American football and all the sports that are doing well. They have loads of data. Watch Monday Night Football and you get it all.

We seem to think there's only two ways you can sell it: one, to treat it like roulette and just put a bet on a number, or get dressed up to get drunk. We don't sell it that once you get into racing, it's a really interesting sport to follow and to have knowledge and an opinion on.

That's almost certainly a lot easier said than done; how you sell it is that. But if you get people in for a night or whatever, they'll come in and they'll spend a hundred quid, but they're not going to be still coming in 40 years.

Less Is More With Premier Racedays

There may have been more than 150 Premier Raceday’s but with the greatest deal of respect to them, many are not very good, and why have one at Southwell on a Sunday, for instance. Surely it would have been better to say, look, here's 30 meetings through the season, Ascot, Newmarket and Goodwood, etc, and you are going to see Field Of Gold three times, you're going to see Ombudsman three times.

It's the best racing, the very highest quality; you're going to see the same sort of horses turning up every month. When there's 120 premier meetings and they're going from Royal Ascot to Southwell on a Sunday. That’s not your entry point for starting to follow the sport.

Making Jockeys Marketable

Oisin Murphy obviously has some quite clever people behind him because for years it has been noticeable he always takes his helmet off when he’s going into the paddock, wherever he is, whether it’s at Windsor on a Monday night or at Royal Ascot.

I'm sure little things like that are what made him and have given him a brand and made him a lot more identifiable than most jockeys. It’s a small, simple thing. Names on breeches might start to make the jockeys a bit more identifiable and relatable to those on the track on the day.

Racing Needs New Owners!

It certainly hasn't impacted on his racing. I would say he's been riding better than ever this year. It certainly hasn't had any adverse effect on the track. Racing needs more household names. But they don't necessarily have to be jockeys. They could be owners as well.

That's more the idea they’ve gone down with the American show that's out now. It's focused more on the ownership group with the horse. And the reality is, we need to attract new owners more than anything else. They are the people that make the investment in the sport. If we are going to make anyone the celebrities of the sport, perhaps it’s them.

The one thing Dad [Mark Johnston, trainer] always used to say that we went on about the jockeys’ championship most, albeit it's a complete waste of time now because it's only over about four months of the year. We go on about the trainers’ championship secondly, and we don’t really pay any attention to the owners’ championship.

If you get down to October and Coolmore, Juddmonte, and Godolphin are in a three-way tussle for it, it's not unrealistic to think that that will motivate them to go to the yearling sales and spend more on horses. Often, the owners are not to the forefront as they should be.

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