West Australian legend passes away

Max Johnson, a member of The West Australian Harness Racing Industry Hall of Fame died on Friday the 24th July.

The 84yo Johnson won the Perth Drivers Premiership on four occasions between 1952 and 1959 and was also runner-up in the premiership a further five times.

His premiership win in the 1951/52 season came a 21yo and he remains the youngest driver ever to win that honour.

With a 59 year gap between his first winner and his last winner (1949 – 2008) he holds the honour of the longest spread of wins in WA history.

He drove 866 winners during his career with 548 of that total in Perth.

He also won Inter Dominion heats in Adelaide (1958) and Sydney (1960) and landed a massive plunge in Melbourne in 1960 when Fancy Robert beat a field of Inter Dominion contenders in a Free-For-All.

With his trainer father Bill Johnson (also a WA Hall of Fame inductee) the Johnsons dominated Perth trotting in the fifties and early sixties.

Max’s wins included the 1951 WA Pacing Cup with Royal Shadow and a Fremantle Cup with Sylvia Mint while others of the likes of Kiwi Dillon, Kodak and Sultana also won feature races and were household names in Perth.

In 1979 Max Johnson again made national headlines when trainer Colin Joss engaged Max to drive the then unheralded black stallion Satinover.

Satinover won 19 straight with Max Johnson at the reins including the Group One Australian Pacing Championship before the winning streak came to an end before a crowd of more than 25,000 in the 1980 Match Race of the Century at Gloucester Park when another champion in Pure Steel proved too strong.
 

Alan Parker