Interview with Joe Fanning, the Johnston stable stalwart who is surprise leader in the British title race for 2023
GB: Joe Fanning has been around plenty long enough to appreciate that his recent first spell at the top of Britain’s Flat Jockeys’ Championship may prove short-lived – but as a 52-year-old who returned only in February from seven months out with injury, it’s a situation to be celebrated all the same.
For the best part of 30 years, Fanning has been based with the northern powerhouse operation led by record-breaking trainer Mark Johnston – and now his son Charlie – and the rider’s career total of approaching 2,800 winners places him second only to the soon-to-retire Frankie Dettori among riders active in the UK.
Rightly renowned for his astute judgement of pace on front-runners, Fanning won two titles on the winter all-weather circuit more than a decade ago and has a dozen centuries to his name. However, in the jockeys’ title race proper, which runs from May to October, he has never finished higher than his fifth place in 2013.
Seldom in the limelight, he often has to give way to various owners’ retained riders when the big races come around, and had to wait until his 46th birthday before enjoying a coveted first G1 success on The Last Lion at Newmarket in September 2016.
Now, though, the ever-reliable Fanning has edged ahead of higher-profile names like Oisin Murphy, William Buick and Hollie Doyle to lead the championship race for 2023.
Can he sustain his current outstanding strike rate of 22% through the rest of the summer and stay in contention for the title? Probably not. But if he’s in with a chance he’ll give it his best – and if he’s not he won’t let it worry him.
A long way to go
“There’s a very long way to go, but it’s great that the horses are running so well and long may it continue,” he says, speaking on Wednesday [July 28] on his return from Carlisle racecourse.
On a bread-and-butter card of the type at which he has made his name, Fanning had won on the last of three rides for the Johnston stable, which has provided more than 1400 of his winners.
“I am really pleased with how the season has started and June and July are traditionally good months for the stable,” he goes on. “It’s still early days but if by any chance I’m still in contention later in the year I’ll give it a go, but Oisin, William and Hollie all have a lot more ammunition than me.
“Those guys could be 20 behind going into Goodwood but still have every chance if they give it a kick. For us in the north it quietens down in September, whereas they have all those meetings at Kempton and tracks like that. But so long as the horses keep running well I’ll be happy.”
The serious injury Fanning sustained almost exactly a year ago would have given many jockeys of his age pause for thought, but in Ascot Gold Cup winner Subjectivist – also on the injury list at the time – he had a very special horse to look forward to.
As such, retirement was never considered, he says. “It happened at Musselburgh at the end of June last year,” recalls Fanning. “The horse I was riding kind of dug its toes in at the road crossing in the back straight and I fell in a weird sort of way.
Subjectivist target
“I had a spiral fracture of the humerus and I was told that recovery would be very slow, so I talked to Mark about it and he suggested I write off the rest of the year and aim to come back to ride Subjectivist in Saudi at the end of February, so that’s what I did.
“Subjectivist was a massive part of the incentive to get fit again, but I was always coming back as I wouldn’t have been happy finishing like that. I’d have come back with or without Subjectivist, but he certainly helped.”
Following victories in the Prix Royal-Oak at ParisLongchamp and the Dubai Gold Cup, Subjectivist handed Fanning the biggest win of his long career at Ascot in the 2021 Gold Cup.
But the horse then suffered a serious injury that would have been career-ending in many cases. Nursed back with immense patience by the Johnstons, Subjectivist has run respectably three times this year without recapturing his former brilliance, including when third in last week’s Gold Cup.
Reflecting on the day at Royal Ascot two years ago when he came home five lengths clear of Princess Zoe, Fanning says: “I’d gone there that day quite strong on the horse, because we’d done the exact same work with him as we had before he'd won the Dubai Gold Cup and he’d worked just as well, if not better.
Quite confident
“I was quite confident about him and I wasn’t surprised he won,” he adds. “There was a lot of talk about Stradivarius, and whether he was unlucky, but I think Subjectivist would have taken a lot of beating anyway.
“It was nice when we came back into the winner’s enclosure as all the lads who weren’t riding in the Gold Cup had come out of the weighing room to clap us in. They are a great bunch and I get on well with them.”
The Qatar Goodwood Cup is next for Subjectivist, provided he can be kept sound, and Fanning believes there’s more to come.“He’s got a bit better with every race since he came back but he’s still running a bit gassy,” he says.
“He does a lot of swimming and plenty of cantering, but we don’t work him hard. We just look after him and so there’s no flat-out hard work.”
Considering Fanning can still ride at 8st 2lb, it’s hard to believe he started out over jumps “I came over from Ireland to join ‘Squeak’ Fairhurst in 1989 and he had a few hurdlers as well as his Flat horses,” he recalls.
“I was too light – in the eight stones º and I shouldn’t really have done it, but I took a few rides and had my first win in a handicap hurdle at Sedgefield on a horse called Holdenby.
“Then not long after that I had a fall, over hurdles again, at Newcastle and that was the end of my career as a jump jockey. Looking back, that was a bit of luck to be honest, as when I came back I just rode on the Flat and I raced through my apprentice 
claim in just two seasons.”
Career snowballed
Like so many youngsters for whom success comes easily, Fanning struggled a bit once the claim was gone, but joining up with Mark Johnston, who trained locally, proved a turning point and he has never looked back.
“I probably went through my claim too quick, and when I lost it I had two years which were really quiet,” he says. “I had ridden a few winners for Mark as an apprentice but it was only in around 1995 that I went to him full-time and even then it took a couple of years before I got going. Then once I did it just snowballed.”
Fanning says it is business as usual under Charlie Johnston, who now holds the licence in his sole name after a year sharing it with his father, and that snowball shows no sign of slowing down.
So what of the future? Only John Egan and Jimmy Quinn are older among current riders, and neither ride anything like so frequently, yet Fanning has no plans to join Dettori, who is three months his junior, in calling time on his career.
“I know I’ll have to retire some time, but so long as I can keep everyone happy it won’t be any time soon,” he says. “It’s riding the winners that keeps me going. I’m still enjoying it, but you have to be riding winners."
Fanning enjoys helping out his wife Sarah, who preps horses for the sales, does some pre-training and also takes in others at rest. That’s a business that the couple plan to grow but there's one route he is adamant he won't be going down.
"There’s no chance I’ll ever train,” he insists.
Mark Johnston on Joe Fanning
Joe is the easiest person in the world to work with – absolutely fantastic. He’s never had a retainer with us and he’s put up with other riders coming in above him without ever getting upset about it – and he’s gradually worked his way into the number one position.
I’ve never ever told a jockey to lead. I just ask them to sit where the horse is happy, and as a result we have a lot of front-runners. I think that’s an acquired skill, much harder than coming from behind, and there’s no doubt that Joe is now recognised as the best.
There are times we use other jockeys and times we feel we need a young jockey coming through, so Joe isn’t getting the cream of the rides, but we keep coming back to the fact that he rides more winners for us than anybody else.
Success breeds success, as confidence is such a big factor, and Joe has never ridden better. However, he’ll need to maintain the current strike-rate to stay in contention for the jockeys’ title as he’s not getting the rides that the others get.
Hopefully the current publicity will bring more rides and better rides, as it would be absolutely wonderful if he could be champion jockey at this stage of his career.
• Visit the Johnston Racing website and the Flat Jockeys’ Championship website
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