MARK JOHNSTON'S flying three-year-old filly, Attraction, maintained her 100 per cent unbeaten six-race record with a pulsating pillar-to-post victory in yesterday's 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket.

It has been ten long years since Johnston's only other Classic race success with Mister Baileys in the 1994 2,000 Guineas but the all-conquering Middleham handler has always reckoned Attraction, who was returned the 11-2 second favourite, represented his best chance of adding to that tally.

"That was fantastic - unbelievable. I've said all along she had the form to win the race, all she had to do was stay the one-mile trip," said the elated trainer not long after his filly had made every yard of the running to win under a power-packed ride from her big-race jockey, Kevin Darley.

Darley wasn't on board when the filly won her first three races at Nottingham, Thirsk, and Beverley in 2003, but after replacing the less experienced Keith Dalgleish in the saddle, Darley steered her to a brace of further triumphs at Royal Ascot and Newmarket's valuable Group 2 Cherry Hinton Stakes.

At the end of the season, as a result of those five victories, Attraction was awarded the much-sought-after accolade of Europe's champion two-year-old filly, although in the meantime disaster had struck when the star juvenile sprinter cracked a rear hind pedal bone.

"We think the fracture occurred when she kicked out in her box at home not long after winning the Cherry Hinton," revealed Johnston, the former veterinary surgeon who has so famously switched professions and rapidly climbed to the top of the racehorse-training tree.

After the injury was found to have completely healed, Darley was re-united with Attraction for her first serious 2004 workout on Middleham High Moor in early April.

More recently the pair teamed up in a public gallop at Ripon races a week ago last Saturday before 6,000 spectators, an exercise masterminded by Johnston and Clerk of the Course, James Hutchinson, to re-acquaint Attraction with the atmosphere of a crowded racecourse following her nine-month enforced absence from action.

"Attraction is an incredible filly. She started lolling round and pricked her ears towards the end of the race but when I asked her she just took off again. She did get the run of the race and when the others came to her a furlong-and-a-half out she had taken the sting out of them," said Darley.

"We were delighted with Attraction's preparation for the Guineas, everything went so smoothly, just perfectly from start to finish, although the final furlong seemed to go on forever, it was hard to watch," added a beaming Johnston, whose wife, Deirdre, couldn't contain her tears of joy in the winners' enclosure.

The victory netted Attraction's owner-breeder, The Duke of Roxburgh, a cool £187,195 for scooping the Group 1 Fillies' Classic, but the money is of secondary importance because in any case she's now worth millions of pounds as a brood-mare.

"This is the stuff of dreams. At one point, after her injury last year, we were told she'd never race again. I thought Attraction was about to be swallowed up when they got to her, but she just kept going," said the jubilant Duke.

Attraction's victory in the 1,000 Guineas ended a wretched run of defeats by northern fillies in the race, stretching back 27 years to the last winner to be trained in our area, Mick Easterby's Sheriff Hutton-based Mrs McArdy, in 1977.

The appropriately-named Master Marvel won the closing one-mile £20,000 Portland Lodge Handicap to round off a wonderful day for Johnston and his record-breaking Kingsley House team.

* Attraction not only featured on the front cover of The Northern Echo's 2004 Racing North supplement, she also took pride-of-place at the head of the Janus' (Colin Woods) list of ten-to-follow horses for the season, plus was napped by our top-tipster to win the race.

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