The lovely thing about Hayley Turner is the girl-next-door quality which she retains despite having become Britain’s highest-profile woman jockey. But while she still sounds genuinely surprised about her achievements her steady gaze reflects the inner confidence she has always needed to mix it with the boys.
Most stables in the country would have to shut down if they lost their female staff overnight, and this column has banged on for years about giving women riders the opportunities they deserve. Now Hayley has added a second Group One, the Nunthorpe on Margot Did, to her breakthrough July Cup victory earlier this season. Cathy Gannon, too, has already matched her 60 victories of last season with months to go in this one, so perhaps we can stop greeting every female success in the saddle as a curiosity. It is time to abolish the fenced-off category of ‘woman rider’ altogether. Just like their male equivalents, they are jockeys — bad, indifferent or, in their two cases, top-class, tactically intelligent and instinctively resourceful.
Some still say, ‘Ah, yes, but the other gender will never have quite the same strength in a finish.’ They used to say the same in America, where this month Tammi Piermarini became the fifth female in US racing history to register 2,000 winners.
I had gender in mind as I drove across the Oxfordshire Downs to see Eve Johnson Houghton’s string on the 200 acres of lush turf that her family has nurtured for decades. Eve’s granny Helen, still engaged with racing the year after getting her 100th birthday message from the Queen, was actually the first woman to train a Classic winner in Britain when Gilles de Retz won the 2,000 Guineas of 1956. But so blinkered was Jockey Club officialdom in those days that women were not allowed to hold a training licence so it was recorded in the name of her assistant Charles Jerdein.
Being double-barrelled is not always an advantage. The sheer number of letters probably keeps Eve out of racing-page headlines which would otherwise be her due. But with winners now coming in a steady stream she is buffing up the lustre on one of the grand old names of racing. Father Fulke Johnson Houghton won the St Leger and the Irish Derby with both Ribocco and Ribero, the Coronation Cup with Ile de Bourbon, the Prix Jean Prat with Habitat and the Queen Elizabeth Stakes twice with that splendid filly Rose Bowl. Fulke hasn’t been in the best of health this year. As Eve puts it, ‘He’s given life a good whack and lately it has come back up to bite him on the bum,’ but it can’t be bad to have someone with that track record officially listed as your ‘assistant trainer’.
Eve, who twice won the amateur ladies’ race at Ascot, rode out for Barry Hills and Mick Channon as well as working for six years with John Hills, first as secretary then as assistant trainer. She likes to get up on pretty well everything in the yard herself. ‘The lads give a bit more away and you understand more what they are saying when you’ve ridden them yourself.’ But she doesn’t do quite so much with the yearlings: ‘Problem is, if I get hurt I’m the captain of the ship.’ Earlier this year she, too, made a key breakthrough when The Cheka, owned by Anthony Pye-Jeary and comedian Mel Smith, notched her first Group success in the Group Three Timeform Jury Stakes, previously known as the John of Gaunt Stakes. Now, of course, there is the problem of placing him with the penalty earned by that success.
Is the family name and history an advantage or a problem for her? The smile, as she gestures out of the 4×4 window we are sharing with a lurcher, a terrier and a black Lab at the glorious rolling downs, is answer enough. ‘It is a bloody long name and it does make me sound a bit posh. But look at all this. How heavenly is this?’ It is just as heavenly watching her string take a pick of grass and munch fallen apples outside the family home.
With the likes of a Willie Carson-leased mare Mrs Greeley, Renee Robeson’s little filly Amistress and Zingana, who didn’t surprise her trainer totally when she scored at 100–1, Eve is up to 18 winners already this season, well placed to bounce past her previous season’s best of 22. She has around 40 horses and would like to expand to 60.
The moments to relish so far? ‘Any day you have a winner. Little fish are sweet and if you’ve had trouble with a horse and have had to scratch your head a bit knowing that it has the ability to do something then getting that win and saying to yourself, “Job well done,” is the satisfaction.’ Lunar Deity looks to have a future, though not on soft going, and Spoke to Carlo made a pleasing debut at Brighton.
What Eve has perhaps brought back to the Johnson Houghton yard is a sense of bustle and momentum to add to its weathered tradition and warm welcome. ‘Small steps,’ says the trainer. But there will be more Group winners from Woodway. The headline writers will just have to use smaller type.
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