WHEN Eve Johnson-Houghton’s Zavateri and the Aidan O’Brien-trained Gstaad got down and dirty to fight out a thrilling finish to last month’s Goffs Vincent O’Brien National Stakes at the Curragh it was an archetypal ‘David versus Goliath’ story with the British challenger prevailing by a head.

Rewind over a half a century to the same venue in 1968, one year after Eve’s birth, and both the narrative and the surnames are exactly the same.

This time it is the Irish Sweeps Derby and Ribero, trained by Eve’s father, Fulke, playing the role of the upstart visitor to defeat the 1/3 favourite, Sir Ivor, representing the Vincent variety of O’Brien, the two unrelated apart from being past and present proprietors of Ballydoyle Stables.

Fulke, who died just seven months ago, had already proved himself a man to be reckoned with by landing the same super-valuable classic with Ribero’s full-brother, Ribocco, 12 months earlier, and his handling of the champion miler of 1962, Romulus.

This time around it was even more of an underdog upset. Eve, who took over the licence from her father in 2007, had landed a solitary Group 1 race, with the home-bred Accidental Agent in 2018, in the intervening period.

Despite boasting an unbeaten record, Zavateri, a 35,000gns yearling purchase and initial pattern winner for his sire, Without Parole, was dwarfed in both physical stature and price tag by Gstaad, a hulking 450,000gns brother to the dual Group 1 victor Vandeek.

Eve, who is keen to point out that Zavateri is in no way a small horse (and at 16 hands is the same size as Sadler’s Wells and considerably taller than Northern Dancer), admits that there was an element of ‘going into the lion’s den’ when she saddled her dual Group 2 winner in a race in which Aidan O’Brien fielded half of the six-strong line-up, one he had already landed on a dozen occasions.

“The great thing with Zavateri is that he likes to win, he doesn’t like getting beat,” she says. These battling qualities shone through and, just as had been the case on his previous start at Glorious Goodwood, he found something extra in the dying strides to repel what had seemed to be a successful late thrust from the runner-up.

Even once the judge called the photo-finish in Zavateri’s favour, further anxiety was in store for Johnson Houghton and owners Mick and Janice Mariscotti as a stewards’ enquiry was called to investigate potential interference between the front pair.

“When they crossed the line, I was fairly sure that we had won, then, once the result was announced, it took so long for the verdict of the stewards’ enquiry to come out,” she recalls.

“I spoke to everyone around, including the likes of Johnny Murtagh, and they all said that we wouldn’t lose it. It just seemed to go on for a very long time, which made us ever more nervous.”

Great reception

“We had a great reception once it was confirmed that we’d won. Aidan is normally really friendly, very gracious, and I’m sure he would have been again if he’d have had the time to be, but it took so long for the enquiry to be resolved, he was busy saddling for the St Leger so I didn’t get to see him afterwards.”

And how did Zavateri handle it all, his first overseas trip? “He was very relaxed about it,” she reveals. “He was back here by 5am the day after. I went and saw him at 5.30am when I got up. His head was in the feed pot and by 6am he was lying down fast asleep.

“He’s come out of it in really good form. He looks a million dollars and he’s very pleased with himself.

“The Curragh looked after us really well. Ireland is a place I like to go but only if I think I’ve got a good chance. It used to be not too expensive, but now, since Brexit, it’s become harder.

“When you go to France it means there are extra delays but it’s not so bad in Ireland, they’ve got it better organised.”

Now the Mariscottis and Johnson Houghton can really start dreaming about an assault on the 2000 Guineas, a race her father never won, although Ribofilio ran so badly in it when favourite that many believed he had been nobbled.

Before then, there is the small matter of next Saturday’s Darley Dewhurst Stakes, Europe’s premier juvenile contest.

It is over the same seven-furlong distance as Zavateri’s last two wins, and the undulations of Newmarket’s Rowley Mile should not inconvenience him because he has already proved himself across the similar terrain of the neighbouring July Course.

Integral part

Johnson Houghton knows exactly what it takes to win the Dewhurst having played an integral part in the 2002 triumph of Tout Seul. “He was a colt that my father and I bought together at Tatts Ireland [for a paltry £12,500] and I put the syndicate together to own him, so it was an amazing day,” she remembers while adding the caveat “it was 23 years ago, a completely different time.”

Having over 100 horses would just fry my brain.

Different times, indeed. Five years later, when Eve got her name above the door at the family’s Woodway Stables in Blewbury, equidistant between Oxford and Lambourn, things had reached such a low ebb that it housed just 18 horses.

No longer enjoying the backing of big owner-breeders, such as Charles Engelhard and the Aga Khan, which had been the bedrock of her father’s success, it was four years before she grabbed her first pattern race victory and another seven before she repeated that feat.

Nowadays, on the back of nine successive seasons where her winners total has never dropped much below 40 and reached a high of 56 last term, the string size has more than quadrupled and Woodway is bulging at the seams.

“I have 84 boxes and they are pretty much full, which is something I’m really proud of,” Johnson Houghton reveals.

“I wouldn’t mind having a few more, but, honestly, having over 100 horses would just fry my brain. I’ve got a very small brain. And it would completely and utterly fry it!”

Quality horses

“Now we just need to get the number of winners up as well. I’d rather have really good quality horses, which is what we’re aiming for. We’re getting there.”

Even leaving Zavateri aside, the current season has produced a number of other highlights, chief among them Havana Hurricane giving the yard a second Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot in the last four years and Rage Of Bamby landing the Group 3 Hackwood Stakes.

A statistically significant landmark has also been achieved in the past few days with the £1 million prize money barrier on the verge of being broken for the first time.

“I’ve always wanted to get past a million in a season,” Johnson Houghton admits. “We’re actually down on number of winners. But the quality has been much better at the top end. So that’s great.”

Famed for her straight-talking, Johnson Houghton is not one to try to pull the wool over her owners’ eyes and persevere with a horse of highly limited ability.

“You’ll notice that I’ve had a lot of horses run just once for me this season,” she says. “That’s because I am prepared to say ‘It’s not worth your keeping it in training, it’s time to move it on’.”

“They have to give joy. I don’t care whether it’s in a Class 6 or a Group 1, they have to give the owner joy. They’re costing a lot of money, and if they’re not, what is the point?

“It’s not a nice part of the job, but then you have to make a plan whether you’re going to go forwards or stop, if it’s time to find another trainer. Every horse deserves your attention and to have a plan made about it.”

I am speaking to Eve in between two more trips to Ireland, just returned from the Tattersalls Ireland September Sale and ready to jump back on a plane for the Goffs Orby auction.

Asked for her reflections on the trade at Tatts Ireland, she exclaims: “It was strong, oh so strong! It’s a great sale, I love it, and the quality there was up, they do a really good job. Although the average and median price were both up by 50%, I did manage to get five bought.”

Now we come on to discuss the big change in her business over the past few years. She always worked the sales in tight partnership with her father but, owing to his advancing years, that time passed and she was forced to look elsewhere for help.

Father

“I owe my father everything,” she stresses. “He taught me how to buy, what to buy, what to look for in a horse, what I like, what we can train and what we can’t train here. Where I’m training, how lucky am I? It’s just amazing to have this set-up. It’s wonderful.

“My dad and I always used to buy everything together, but he became less able to get around the sales and I couldn’t do it all and train the horses at home at the same time. So I needed to get myself an agent.”

Which is where Anthony Bromley of Highflyer Bloodstock came in. Still better known for his work in National Hunt circles, and famed most for his sourcing of Kauto Star, he has also unearthed numerous good flat horses over the years.

“Anthony had bought some horses for Henry Ponsonby ownership syndicates which had been sent to me to train. And I thought that they looked like the sort of horses that I can get on with. So I asked Anthony to help me and we’ve gone from there.

“It took a few years to work each other out, but we’re there now. He’s a Duracell bunny.

He keeps going, going, going. He’s amazing. Every so often I just have to say to him: ‘yeah, that’s enough, thank you’. And it’s my money that we’re spending. So when I say stop, we stop.”

Strength to strength

Their relationship has gone from strength to strength, as the cheap acquisition of both Zavateri and Havana Hurricane (who cost a mere 9,000gns) can attest.

They don’t operate at the top end of the market. Johnson Houghton racks her brains to think of a horse she has ever trained which cost six figures, eventually concluding that there might possibly have been one in the ownership of The Bronte Collection.

“Unfortunately, I just don’t have the clients that will spend that sort of money,” she concedes. “I’m sure one day I will. And won’t it be wonderful? Imagine what I can do with a Frankel or two? But we’re doing quite well with what we’ve got at the moment.”

Johnson Houghton comes across quite differently to some people who take over the reins from their successful parents and never quite shift the sense of having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

Sure, she has inherited a fantastic yard from her father, a man who trained numerous champions. One must also mention that her grandmother, Helen, was the first British woman to train a classic winner, Gilles Der Retz, in the 2000 Guineas of 1956, even if, at the time, the rules of racing did not allow for female participation so the victory was officially credited to her male assistant, while Fulke and Peter Walwyn, giants of training over jumps and on the level respectively, are also family members.

But Eve taking out a licence at some point was a long way from being a fait accompli. Indeed, she started her adult life spending a couple of years in London as the office manager for a marketing company before travelling the world with a rucksack on her back.

It was then simply the lure of the countryside that brought her back to the sport, working for Ponsonby and John Hills.

Build the business

She asserts that “even just before I started training, I never thought I’d take over the licence.

“At that point it was just up to me to try and build the business back up and carry on doing well by Woodway,” she continues. “As it’s worked out, I’ve got a completely different client base to what Dad had.”

So, despite all the apparent advantages, Johnson Houghton was almost an accidental trainer, just like another ancestor of hers, John Goldsmith, was an accidental British agent who carried out incredible acts of valour behind enemy lines in World War II, prompting the naming of her Queen Anne Stakes winner.

Accidental or not, Eve Johnson Houghton has already achieved enough to be more than worthy of a place amongst the pantheon of top trainers who share some of her bloodlines.

With Zavateri’s Dewhurst and Guineas tilts still to look forward to, Woodway is very much back on the racing map.