Johnston playing the numbers game in effort to challenge for big prizes

The first Flat trainer to saddle 200 winners in a season when he completed the history-making double century last year, the Middleham man stands on the brink of repeating the feat.

His flourishing stables should reach the landmark next week – and there is every likelihood that the Scots-born trainer will surpass the 221 winners that he trained in 2009.

These are prodigious feats that have been largely ignored by a racing fraternity which, disappointingly, still tends to be heavily biased towards the South.

But this does not perturb the outspoken 50-year-old who now believes that the amount of prize money is far more important than the volume of winners sent out by his Kingsley House stables.

"Replicating what we did last year is not important to me, particularly in the current climate," Johnston told the Yorkshire Post at Pontefract races this week.

"It is very important to put the emphasis of the whole team onto the prize money, although, of course, the number of winners is still important.

"From the owners' point of view, we need to be winning the more valuable races rather than just going for the quantity of winners."

In every aspect of his work, Johnston applies a great analytical mind. His goal is to win 2.5m of prize money for his patrons this year. It is ambitious, but achievable.

So far, he is about 300,000 short of his target, though an eye-catching double at Pontefract on Thursday helped to make up the shortfall.

The first winner Itzakindamagic was helped by an inspired front-running ride by Kieren Fallon, the former champion jockey, before Silvestre de Sousa conjured a winning performance out of 12-1 shot Licence To Till in the day's feature race that was worth 9,712 to winning connections – and Johnston's personal ledger.

It was also the trainer's first bet for four years, during which he has trained more than 500 winners.

"I felt insulted by the horse's price so I had my first bet for four years," revealed a beaming Johnston.

Unlike the Flat riders' championship that starts at Doncaster in late March and ends on Town Moor in early November so travel-weary jockeys can have a deserved break, the trainers' title is now determined on prize money accrued over a calendar year following many changes to its composition.

Johnston is a convert to this – he says that it recognises the fact that stables are 365-a-day businesses – but, even with 200 horses at his disposal, he does not have the firepower to compete with the likes of Sir Michael Stoute, Aidan O'Brien and Saeed bin Suroor who are invariably multi-handed when it comes to the Classics.

Indeed, Stoute won last year's trainers' title with just 99 winners – the key figure was the 3.4m of prize money.

It is one reason, says Johnston, why there has got be a greater emphasis on the quality of racing rather than the quantity of meetings.

And while he welcomes the fact that there will be 15 fewer Flat meetings next year, and eight less National Hunt fixtures, he believes that racing's authorities have not gone far enough – despite the launch of the new British Champions' Series.

"I'm begininng to sound like a broken record but there's too much low-grade racing – we are boring the public," says Johnston who has been Middleham-based for the past 22 years.

Warming to his theme, Johnston was only prepared to give a qualified welcome to plans to move the Ebor handicap – the centrepiece of York's August meeting – from its traditional Wednesday slot to Saturday next year in order to attract an even bigger crowd.

A similar scheduling change has been made to Newmarket's July Cup and Johnston says there are dangers.

Pointing out that there can be as many as seven Flat fixtures on a Saturday in high summer, he questions whether there are "sufficient good horses and good jockeys" to go round and whether this will dilute the Ebor.

He says today's scheduling is a case in point, with two competitive cards in the North West at Haydock and Chester rivalling Ascot's Queen Elizabeth Stakes meeting.

In an ideal world, the man who has won the 1000 and 2000 Guineas respectively with Attraction and Mister Baileys would go even further than the shake-up unveiled this week and abolish the entire handicapping system.

He believes it is antiquated and "confusing" to the racing public and that it would be far more straightforward if horses ran in graded categories that reflected their ability.

Meanwhile, the trainer is delighted that Eastern Aria, the recent winner of the Park Hill Stakes, is expected to contest the Melbourne Cup – the race that stops Australia – in early November.

The horse will run in the royal blue colours of Sheikh Mohammed's Godolphin racing operation and the five-year-old mare heads into quarantine this weekend in preparation for one of the few races that has eluded Dubai's ruler.

It is the kind of challenge that Johnston relishes, but he quickly pointed out that money won overseas is exempt from the trainers' title standings – and that there is still much to achieve domestically before he will be satisfied.