Charlie Johnston 2026 Sky Bet Ebor Festival stable tour

It is our nearest big Festival track and Yorkshire’s equivalent of Newmarket, Ascot and Goodwood. It is very much our home tie.

There are four Summer festivals and they are those four which come at three week intervals through the summer. York is very much up there. They deserve all the praise that they get. It is a track that does everything so well. They have done a fantastic job.

On the racing front, the prize money is fantastic, minimum £100,000 a race for the entire meeting. Generally, the owners are all very positive about their experiences. From a general racegoer punter’s point of view, it's a well laid out, fun, enjoyable racecourse to be at.

Going back five or ten years, it would certainly have been considered a slightly poor relation to those other three festivals. Now I think it is arguably the second biggest behind Ascot.

It works well from a financial business point of view, but at the same time they know they need those customers to keep coming back and coming back in numbers. So, you need to make sure that they leave there satisfied having had a good customer experience.

I think we will be light numerically. We’ll probably have about ten across the four days. Because of the competitive nature of the meeting and given the prize money is so good, nearly every race almost is a full field. So, the racing is hugely competitive and as a result it's not a meeting that you send horses to make up the numbers. 

You've got to go there with horses that you think have a live chance. As a result, we’ll have a fairly small but select team but I'd like to think that everything that we will send will be there on merit and with a reasonable chance.

Vincenzo Peruggia won’t go in the Sir Kevin Sinfield 7 In 7 now. He needed to win at Newmarket on Saturday to go to York, and he didn’t.

He's run at two of the previous big festivals in Ascot and Goodwood and came up a bit short. We felt he needed to step away from the big summer festival handicaps into something a little bit calmer to try and get back on the right track.

Sir Kevin is a northern man and played so long for the Leeds Rhinos and did so much for Rob Burrow. He is a local hero as well as a rugby hero involved in both league and union at the highest levels.

He is someone I'd have a huge amount of respect for and what he's done on and on and off the pitch, that's for sure.

Venetian Lace will possibly go in the Yorkshire Oaks. We got back on track at Goodwood. She ran poorly in the Oaks, but that was completely ground driven. I was quite happy to put a line through that and left Epsom very much set on going to the Pretty Polly. But there was a bit of a change of heart from the owners at the 11th hour and they wanted her to go to the Falmouth at Newmarket but in hindsight, that was the wrong decision and derailed our season a little bit.

It would have been good to try her at a mile and a quarter in the Pretty Polly because we thought ten furlongs was likely to be her optimum trip.

So, we left Newmarket a bit in no man's land, and had to try and get back on track and quickly. I thought we did that to a large extent at Goodwood. We still left there thinking perhaps ten furlongs is going to prove to be her optimum. Where she goes next will be driven largely by ground and opposition.

She's very much a fast ground filly. If the ground was fast in York and that caused a few of the other big names to pull out, then it might become the preferred choice. She's also in a Group 1  in Deauville on the Sunday of Ebor Week which is a mile and a quarter rather than a mile and a half.

The trip is probably slightly better in France, but the ground is probably likely to be better in York. It'll be a case of weighing up the two options.

She is also entered into the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe but as yet I've haven’t given it much thought. But it is a possibility. She ran well in the Guineas and has shown herself to be a top class filly.

Align The Stars will run. It has very much been his target for quite some time. He's owned by Tony Farmer who is pretty local to York and for Tony, the Ebor is his Derby. It is the race he’d love to win above all others. Just to have a runner in it means the world to Tony.

He obviously won the Northumberland Plates, so he's probably won the next biggest northern staying handicap this year. 

He ran at Goodwood, though I do worry slightly now that his age and that the fact that he's now got a mark of a 101 might mean two miles is maybe his optimum trip over which he won the Northumberland Plate, rather than a mile and six furlongs.

I also entered him in the Irish Cesarewitch which could be a nice target for him after York. He's a tough, honest horse. He runs his race. There might be one or two in there a bit speedier and a bit better handicapped than him but hopefully he'll give Tony a good run.

It is an incentive [ther winner gets a shot at the Melbourne Cup], albeit Willie Mullins and the O'Briens are targeting it plenty. But for me at the point that you could travel halfway around the world and a vet that's never set eyes on your horse before can tell you whether it's fit to run or not is a pretty scary position to put yourself in.

I think you need to be very, very confident that the horse would vet clean to want to go all the way around the world.

Most of the horses that you're thinking of sending over there are five-year-old horses that have spent most of their life running over a mile and six and two miles so not many of them are too clean limbed!

I can't say it's a race that I particularly have on my wish list of races to win.

On day one, I think we'll probably run Ghaiyya in the two-mile Stayers’ Handicap. She ran well on her first try over two miles at Ascot in the Brown Jack, just beaten by Kirchner who finished second to Align The Stars in the Northumberland Plate.

She's a half-sister to Subjectivist so was always likely to end up over this kind of distance.  She was a little bit keen at Ascot, and I'd like to think sort of getting used to the pace of those races over that kind of trip she'll settle a bit better next time. She is still unexposed at those kinds of trips, so I wouldn't be shocked to see her go well.

On Thursday, beside Venetian Lace, Francophone could go for the Galtres Stakes Listed race. She was second in a mile and a half Listed race at Newmarket recently which was her first try at that trip for a long time, and she ran very well. She hung across the track in the closing stages, which possibly cost her the race in doing so.

Having come up a bit short in Group 2s earlier in the year, she has stepped back in class slightly and ran very well.

In the seven furlong nursery that day we'll run a horse called Telegraphic, who has had three runs and won very impressively at Brighton on his second start. He then finished second at Yarmouth, getting caught in the last 25 yards trying to give away a penalty to a horse that had shown a reasonable level. I thought he emerged from that with a lot of credit and I hope the handicapper leaves him at the same mark of 82, one I'd like to think that he could be competitive off. It will be a cavalry charge, and a tough race, but I think he's a nice horse.

Also on Thursday we'll probably run a filly called Carnival Of Light in the seven furlong fillies’ handicap. She is a Night of Thunder filly that I bought for £1,000! There won't be too many of them about, that's for sure.

I got her at the end of her three-year-old career having still been unraced at the time and she'd had plenty of injuries and issues and it's probably taken us the best part of the year to get into the track. But she's won her last two albeit at Wolverhampton. She has only had four runs in her life and is an improving filly. Who knows how high she could climb. This would be a big jump up from Wolverhampton, but having won her last two, I think she deserves a crack at something better.

On Friday,I would like to run a filly called Si Grass if she gets into the mile handicap. She ran at Goodwood her first run after a six-month layoff after an injury. She was very hot in the preliminaries, quite keen in the race, just generally very fresh and full of herself after six months off. She finished eighth, which might not look very encouraging, but if you read between the lines to finish as close as she did, I could see her taking a big step forward.

I think she's a filly that's better than her mark anyway so I would be hopeful that she'll sneak in at the bottom of the weights.

In the Convivial Maiden Stakes, I could well run a horse called Happy Love, who was second on debut at Beverley and ran a nice race, only getting beaten by one of Karl Burke's that had previous experience. The two of them pulled a long way clear from the rest. I thought he emerged from that with a lot of credit and would step forward for the run. He's a smart horse and he probably deserves the opportunity.

Folk Pageant might go in the mile and a quarter fillies’ handicap if there was a sudden transformation in the weather and it turned up soft. She's been a bit disappointing since she won on Derby Day at Epsom, but I think that's largely down to her needing some cut in the ground which she hasn't had for a while now.

On Saturday, in the Melrose we could run a horse called Sea And Sun, who finished midfield in a handicap at Goodwood. He’s lightly raced, he's only had four runs and is still a maiden, but I think he's crying out to go up to these kinds of trips. I think he'll stay every yard and a bit more. Again, he's another one that probably wouldn't mind a bit of dig in the ground.

It’s a big ask for him. I'm campaigning him quite boldly given the fact he still hasn't broken his maiden. I think he'll make up into a smart staying handicapper next year and the owners were keen to roll the dice once more in a big one like this and if he comes up short then he can go and win a little handicap somewhere and get his head in front. But I think he's a nice horse for the future.

In the mile and a quarter handicap that closes the meeting, I'd imagine we'll probably run Evanesco there again. He was only beaten a length or so in an equivalent race at Goodwood. It is tough for him in that he showed his hand at the Guineas meeting when he won very impressively and went up to a mark of a 100.

He's off a mark of 99 now but in these sorts of races there's generally horses less exposed than him that he's having to give away a lot of weight to.

He’s a little bit in those landing that if he goes up into Pattern company there's probably horses in there rated 105 to 110 but in these handicaps, he's having to give away a lot of weight to less exposed horses. He's a tough, genuine horse. 

He could also be joined in there by a horse called Thunder Wonder who I couldn't believe nobody really picked up his run at Goodwood.

I was reading a thing in the Racing Post the other day about unluckiest losers in Goodwood. Well, they can't have watched the racing very closely not to have mentioned him. He is notoriously a bit of a slow starter. but he jumped off okay and then proceeded to clip heels and stumble about ten to 15 yards into the race and went down on his nose. Marco Ghiani nearly fell off.

By the time he regathered himself, he was ten lengths detached at the back of the field. He ended up having to come round the whole field in the straight and finished fifth, beaten about two lengths. In the circumstances I thought he ran an extraordinary race.

He's not the most trustworthy, he hasn't won for a little while but if he starts 33-1 again like he did at Goodwood then it's probably worth a little bit each-way.