Eve Johnson Houghton has saddled three Royal Ascot winners, including a Group One, in the past eight years, having bought all three for a combined total of just under £30k, and as she set out on the business of buying next year’s two-year-olds at the Doncaster sales on Wednesday, the trainer made the process of equine bargain-hunting sound simple enough.
“I just like a nice horse,” Johnson Houghton said. “You’re looking for different things for different clients, but they’ve got to walk well and have a good outlook, and I have to forgive a few things as well, because they can’t be perfect specimens at my price.
“Sometimes it’s the stallion that people are cold on, or it’s not entirely correct [physically], but they’ve got to have a good outlook and a good eye, I think.”
If it were that straightforward, though, everyone would be doing it, and the truth is that few, if any, British trainers have played the lower end of the market with as much success as Johnson Houghton in recent years.
Johnson Houghton is a third-generation trainer at Woodway Stables, which was purchased by her grandmother, Helen, in 1945, whose many successes from the yard, including a 2,000 Guineas victory with Gilles De Retz in 1956, went unrecorded – in the form-book sense at least – as women were not allowed to hold a trainer’s licence until the mid-1960s. It was not until December 1977 that Johnson Houghton’s achievements were finally recognised, when she became one of the first three women elected to membership of the Jockey Club that had refused her a licence two decades earlier.
Her father, Fulke Johnson Houghton, then held the licence at the family stable from 1961 until 2007, saddling more than 1,200 winners including Ile De Bourbon in the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes in 1978. He remained a key presence in the stable until his death in February this year, and Johnson Houghton says that she is “still really lucky to have Dad as my backup. I’ve really, really missed him this year, but it was a great grounding and I’ve still got my mum around, which is fabulous.
“Trainers are the ones with our names in lights but no trainer is capable without their team, and I’ve got a brilliant yard team as well. We’re a wonderfully old-fashioned yard, I try to make small improvements every year, but I took over an amazing place and you can’t get away from the basics. I’m lucky enough to train for some wonderful people as well, and they trust me to do the best with them.”
Accidental Agent, a home-bred who was unwanted at the sales and bought back for 8k gns (£8,400), won the Group One Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot in 2018. Chipotle, a 10k gns (£10.5k) yearling, took the Windsor Castle Stakes at the Royal meeting three years later, while this summer has been a triumph for the trainer’s eye for a bargain, with Havana Hurricane, at 9k gns (£9,450) taking the Windsor Castle and the unbeaten Zavateri, still a relatively cheap buy at 35k gns (£36,750), proving to be one of 2025’s best juveniles. Two Group Two victories – in the July Stakes at Newmarket and the Vintage Stakes at Goodwood – mean that he has already repaid his purchase price more than four times over.
As a result, Johnson Houghton is on course to reach £1m in prize money in Britain in a season for the first time since she took over the licence at the magnificent 200-acre Woodway Stables, near Blewbury in Oxfordshire in 2007. There are extra orders, too, to be filled at the yearling sales over the next couple of months, though not necessarily any increase in her individual budgets. Everyone loves a bargain, after all.
“I have, definitely [got more orders],” she says, “but all to a level. Which is great, don’t get me wrong, but it would be nice to get a few more … grown-up orders, shall we say?
“As I keep trying to tell everyone, it’s amazing if you can actually win a Royal Ascot race for 10 grand. It’s possible, but it’s bloody hard, and you’ve got to be at it a long time to do that. The owner of Havana Hurricane had some disasters with me before that, and he stuck at it and in the end, we got it right.”
Another essential talent when buying racehorses at auction is knowing when to let go.
“You set your price and sometimes you might say, I’ll give it another kick, but other times, you just walk away,” she says. “You have to, you can’t overspend and just because you pay more, it doesn’t necessarily mean you get any better. You just don’t have to forgive so much.”
And though sticking to a budget might seem to rule out the need to consider every yearling at an auction like Doncaster, where around 400 horses will go under the hammer in two days and the top prices are into six figures, the opposite is often the case.
“I think you have to look at more,” Johnson Houghton says. “You have to look at everything in case something falls through the gaps. I won’t look at every horse here but Ant [the veteran bloodstock agent Anthony Bromley, the other half of her purchasing operation] will.”
Zavateri will bid to give his trainer the second Group One win of her career in his next start in either the National Stakes, at the Curragh next month, or the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket in October. Havana Hurricane, meanwhile, is being aimed at the Group Two Flying Childers Stakes at Doncaster’s St Leger meeting in just over two weeks’ time.
And all the while, their trainer will continue her meticulous search at the yearling sales, looking for a nice horse at the right price. “Bloody hard” it might be, but who would want to bet against Eve Johnson Houghton sifting another golden nugget from the auction ring before the year is out?
