‘We’re a wonderfully old-fashioned yard’: Eve Johnson Houghton’s family of winners

Trainer opens up on her midas touch in the market as she closes in on £1m in prize money for the first time

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.