The jumps and flats trainer, who is often described as "daughter of legendary jumps trainer JJ Houlahan", is creating a legend of her own after a stellar season with Pentiffic.

The six-year-old gelding was the standout jumps horse of the year, winning the appropriately-named JJ Houlahan Jumps Championship, and is likely to be invited to contest the world's richest jumps race, the Nakayama Grand Jump in Japan in March.

Houlahan has about 40 jumpers and flat racers on the books at Yarraman Park, the Rye stables she operates with husband Brian Johnston.

If working with her father didn't seal her fate in training, the love of horses it engendered did.

"I just love horses," Houlahan, speaking from Yarraman Park, said last week.

There were few women in the industry when she took it up in earnest at 16, already experienced after strapping horses for several years.

"It just didn't occur to me that you couldn't do it."

Wakeful Club president Barbara Duff acknowledged Houlahan's terrific year on the track, but said the award also took into account the "amazing work she does behind the scenes".

"The Lady of Racing award recognises outstanding women in the industry of racing and Fran Houlahan is certainly a really worthy recipient," she said.

Houlahan is president of the Mornington Trainers' Association and is on the board of the Australian Trainers' Association and the Jumps Association.

She was involved in drawing up new protocols for the management of equine influenza outbreaks. "We got no cases of equine influenza in Victoria during the recent outbreak, so I'm pretty proud to be part of that," she said.

Houlahan was typically humble accepting her award and congratulated the other women nominated in a speech which Duff said was "most amazing".

Houlahan is now turning her attention to the spring season and had hopes for her four-year-old gelding Trustus. And Pentiffic will remain in training for the trip to Nakayama, outside Tokyo, where Houlahan has her eye on the winner's purse of more than $1.1million.