'My biggest disappointment in 50 years is not teaching Carvill's Hill to jump'

Tradition runs deep in Irish jump racing. Nothing is more redolent of that tradition than the Dreaper family and Greenogue, a farm on the border of County Meath and County Dublin, where Tom Dreaper began to train in 1931 and where his son Jim took over the licence 50 years ago in January 1972.

The Dreaper name carries more than its association with the great steeplechasers – the peerless three-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Arkle, not to mention his brilliant contemporary Flyingbolt and the likes of Prince Regent and Fortria. It is also imbued with a reputation for integrity and decency, for humility in victory and grace in defeat.

And Greenogue is much more than a farm and a racing stable. In 1945 it became the family home of Tom Dreaper and his wife Betty, who raised three children, Jim and his sisters Eva and Valerie. In 1974 Jim married Patricia, a constant source of support to her trainer husband as her mother-in-law had been in her time. In a neat symmetrical touch, the couple became the proud parents of two daughters Lynsey and Shona, and a son Thomas.