'HE COMES FROM BEHIND AND EATS YOU UP'.

​How jockeys do it is beyond me. Ryan Moore recently rode at Sandown on the Friday, America on the Saturday and France on the Sunday. James Doyle just nipped over to Australia in a similar way to you or I taking a weekend break in the Cotswolds. The lifestyle of the top jockeys would send me insane. Far from scooting all around the country on a daily basis I crave the life of the hermit. But then I am anti-social by nature with a dislike for even travelling as far as Barnstaple, less than ten miles up the road. I certainly will not be signing up with Elon Musk to travel to Mars, though the Doyler might, as long as there is a guarantee to have him back in time for first lot Monday morning.
To my surprise the international jockey is not a new or even recently new phenomenon. Rae Johnstone, who rode from the 1920’s to the middle of the 1950’s, was perhaps the pace-setter when it came to riding here, there and everywhere. Though I doubt back home in Australia where he started out as a star apprentice anyone thought his career would see him ride 30 classic winners in Europe, including 3 Epsom Derby winners amongst his 12 British classic successes. Not bad for a jockey who was based in France for the majority of his career and who courted disfavour from the racing authorities virtually from the get-go.
From the very beginning of his career Johnstone had a gambling addiction. It was something he admitted to his autobiography – ghost written by none other than Peter O’Sullevan, and considered at the time as ‘the best ghosting job there ever was’. It is no exaggeration to suggest he was troublesome to the stewards in Australia. He was once banned for several months for ‘gaining access to his earnings’, money that was protected from apprentices until they became fully-fledged jockeys. Later on, he received a 2-year suspension for ‘conspiring to lose a race’, something he vehemently contested. Perhaps the stewards knew of his excessive gambling on races that he rode in and races he did not ride in. He would win money, run it up and consequently lose it all, as addicts tend to do. By the time he left for Europe, even though he could be considered successful in his home country, he was practically broke.
And he never grew any wiser, as he continued to bet in France and in England, only breaking the vicious cycle when he married his second wife.
I suspect Johnstone was a prickly character as though he rode for all of the top stables in France, and for a short while for Lord Glanely in England, he never stayed more than a few seasons with anyone, though years after he would ride for the same people. Several times in his autobiography he seemed to admit to ‘agreeing to disagree’ with trainers and owners alike, he even repeatedly told Marcel Boussac, for whom he won the Epsom Derby on Galcador, that his horses were being over-trained, even though there were trained as Boussac wanted them to be trained.
After winning the 2,000 Guineas on Columbo for Lord Glanely, Johnstone’s tactics in the Derby on the same horse were widely criticised by the racing press and by Lord Glanely himself and very soon afterwards Johnstone returned to France to freelance.
To see him riding on old Pathe News film-reels it is hard to claim Johnstone as a stylist. In his time jockeys just rode differently to their colleagues of today. Even Lester Piggott, who for a while, surprisingly, was a contemporary of Johnstone’s, did not look like the Piggott of legend. Johnstone had a preference for sitting out the back and coming through beaten horses, hence the title of this piece, and unless an owner urged to him to placed if he could not win, he was extremely reluctant to use his whip on obviously beaten horses, which gave rise to the popular opinion that he was not always trying his best. Yet he rode over 2,000 winners during his career in 9 different countries, rode 30 classic winners, won the Arc twice and was champion jockey in France on 3 occasions.
Reading about him he comes across as someone who perhaps never felt a true fit for whatever society in which he lived. Although he tried to hide his antecedence, he was of Aborigine descent and perhaps in Australia he was always fighting against the stigma of the times. In France he was an Australian taking rides from French jockeys. In England he was a French-based jockey coming over and taking rides from English jockeys. And in his day, especially the years after the 2nd World War, French trainers would come over with unraced two-year-olds to land a gamble in a Newmarket seller. And he seemed to court danger. He did so in his career by betting and even in his private life, even up to his death in 1964, he had a mistress and a wife, with his estate shared between the two. Perhaps at the end he had found his niche by becoming far more French than Australian. He was certainly a man prone to the pitfalls of life, losing in the casinos, to bookmakers, and even during the war he was interned by the Italians and after his release having to start from scratch again.
To know whether he would be popular with racegoers today is hard to assess. But what you can say in his favour is that he was a friend of Peter O’Sullevan, which is a bit like being approved-of by racing royalty.