Tom Dreaper continues family legacy with Thurles winner

New name on the training licence steeped in the history of Arkle.

Tom Dreaper took the first step in continuing the family legacy as he enjoyed his maiden winner as a trainer at Thurles with Folly Master.

Dreaper is the son of Jim, from whom he has taken over the training licence, and the grandson of the great Tom Dreaper, trainer of the one and only Arkle.

Dreaper guided Arkle to three consecutive victories in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, a King George and an Irish Grand National among countless other famous triumphs.

Upon retiring in 1971, Tom handed the reins over to Jim, who has now in turn done the same and passed the baton to his own son, Tom, 40, who is named after his grandfather.

The switch happened on March 1 and so the new Dreaper in the training ranks wasted no time in getting off the mark when Folly Master won the Leugh Beginners Chase at Thurles.

Ridden by Keith Donoghue as the the 11-10 favourite, the chestnut could well have been Jim Dreaper’s last winner rather than Tom’s first as the race was an afterthought when another contest was lost due to abandonment.

“Our licences changed over on March 1 and while I’d love to say this was a master plan, it wasn’t,” said the winning trainer.

“I trained point-to-point winners in my own name in recent years to differentiate the two set ups, when selling began to get going, but this is different and is great. I’m glad to get that out of the way.

“He is a lovely horse who has improved hand over fist and this time last year he wouldn’t have run in a point-to-point so was a long way down the pecking order.

“He has got better with racing and I know this was relatively low grade stuff, but he is what my father would want and what I want and that’s a staying chaser for the future.

Arkle winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup
Arkle winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup (PA)

“I have a good few point-to-pointers to run and a handful left to run on the racecourse before going out for the summer.”

Dreaper now hopes to continue in the same vein through the spring and into the summer and build momentum as the year progresses.

He added: “We’ll definitely push on now and the way this game has gone, it is a 12-month a year job now so we’ll need to roll all jobs (winter and summer) in together. The job is changing and anything that will win a race, we’ll hope to give it a rattle.

“We have had some great traditional owners down through the years – long before I was ever thought of, and we don’t ever worry too much about the number of horses. As long as we keep the quality up and maybe push on.”

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