Brian Johnson had 15,716 mounts in his long career and many of those rides were more pain than pleasure.

He was a red hot 18-year-old bug boy at Hastings in the spring of 1974 when he tore cartilage in his right knee which put him out for the season and continued to bother him for most of his career.

“The knee was never good. It would blow up,” he says. “I was always in pain.”

His physical troubles were compounded years later when a horse threw him in the barn area. He landed hard on unforgiving ground and injured his back. Once again the damage would haunt him for years.

He persevered to become Hastings leading rider in 1979 with 136 wins and then put together three straight riding titles in 1986, ‘87 and ‘88. “Those big years were when Roddy Morrison was my agent. He was a super agent and he made the difference,” says Johnson.

Johnson finished his career with 2,366 wins, 1,984 seconds, and 2,025 thirds. He had 15 per cent winners and 40 per cent in the money. He is third behind Chris Loseth and Sam Krasner in both numbers of winners and stakes winners at Hastings.

Johnson was more than a one trick pony. In 1990 he took a real estate course and quickly completed about 10 sales. In the spring of ‘93 he made a lot of money and decided to give his aching body a vacation from the travails of the track, but when the market cooled he was back in the saddle for the ‘95 meet.

The rest rejuvenated him. “I really started riding well. For the first time I enjoyed it. I felt I was riding just for me. I put a lot more heart and soul into it.”

A couple of years later the injury bug bit again. He was hurt leaving the gate and had to have back surgery.

It would have been a good time to retire and put up ‘For Sale’ signs on front lawns. Instead he sought the help of noted physiotherapist Neil McKechnie. For four months he worked out about two and one half hours per day at 8-Rinks and was primed for the opening of the ‘98 season.

“For the first time in years I rode with no pain in my back,” he says. “My knee still hurt but I took Tylenol for that.”

However, there was no cure for the injury which befell him in August, 2001. He was battling for the lead on Charming Peter when the 3-year-old gelding broke down. The last horse in the field stepped on his chest, collapsing his lungs. He also suffered a fractured arm and knee. The folks at the Intensive Care Unit at Vancouver General Hospital didn’t expect him to make it through the night.

He woke up with his two teenage daughters, his sister, his ex-wife Tracy and agent Wayne Snow at his bedside. Full of tubes, he couldn’t talk, but he brought some relief to the anxious onlookers when he wrote on a piece of paper, “You’ve got to be tough if you want to be a cowboy.”

Today there is no physical evidence of that horrific spill. He walks straight, smiles easily; He is riding high on a hot real estate market and plays a competitive game of golf.

So far Johnson’s career reads like a medical report. It is not meant to define his career, but to explain it. How many more triumphs would he have had if the knee and the back remained sound?

Many horsemen remember Johnson as a patient rider who excelled at bringing a horse from off the pace, but he suggests he was better on a front-runner. “I think I was best when I was on the lead. I tried to make sure I had a little gas left in the tank for the run to the wire.”

At the top of his list of favorite horses are Canada West Ranch’s King Alphonse (“He really tried hard.”) and the Jawl Bros’ Chilean sweetheart Tolita (“She had a very smooth action.”) He won several stakes on both.

Johnson was born in Kamloops in 1955 and his father’s job in electronics took the family to California for a few years before settling in Coquitlam when he was 10. When Brian was about 14 his dad, Ed, suggested life as a jockey might be a fitting occupation for the littlest kid on the all-star Little League team.

Arriving at the track, he was directed to the barn of Bobby Hall who advised Brian that if he wanted to be a jockey he should first learn to ride a horse. After school he would take a bus to Southlands where Paddy Boals gave him riding lessons in return for doing odd jobs.

A bus trip from Coquitlam to the Southwest corner of Vancouver was an arduous journey even in the early ‘70s. It was an indication of the dedication that Johnson would bring to his profession. “My dad was always very supportive,” says Brian. “He was the one who got things going and he backed me all the way.”

He began grade 12 in Revelstoke --the family was on the move again--but finished it on Hall’s farm via correspondence.

He graduated into a life of privation.

Urged to go to California he survived in cold tack rooms and dined on stale burgers donated from the track’s coffee wagon, He hustled a few bucks by exercising horses. Eventually people began to take notice. Vancouver based trainer Sonny O’Connell put him on a few horses and he broke his maiden aboard Bryant McAfee’s 3-year-old filly Kelaway at Golden Gate Fields in 1974.

Looking back he thinks he could have stayed in Northern California and done well. But he was suffering from homesickness; Hasting beckoned and he was rewarded with a quick start. Then the knee shattered three weeks into the season, then a back injury, then another back injury... then... It was a litany that ended on a hospital bed surounded by family instead of in the winner’s circle surrounded by cheering fans,

But the Hall of Fame isn’t a bad consolation prize. «