WHILE racecourse executives at Punchestown will be trying their best to encourage runners from Britain to come and compete at this year’s festival meeting, it is interesting to see that one of the winners back in 1966 was sent over from Newmarket.

Travel even half a century ago was not so easy, but the six-year-old Red Tears made the trip a rewarding one for his owner Major Victor McCalmont and the son of Palestine captured the Downshire Handicap Hurdle on Wednesday, the middle day of the three-day meeting. The race was worth £1,167 to the winner and was the most valuable race of the day.

Red Tears was bred at the Astor Studs and was especially well related, his half-brothers included the leading two-year-olds Big Dipper and Gold Dipper. The former also became a successful sire in the USA.

Major McCalmont was a major figure in Irish racing and breeding and his family association with Mount Juliet, Ballylinch Stud, the Kilkenny Foxhounds and more will be long remembered. He had during his lifetime a very rare distinction of being a member of both the Jockey Club in England and the Turf Club in Ireland.

He served with distinction as Senior Steward, first in 1962, again in 1967 and then he served in the role from 1973 to 1978. His father had also served in the role on three occasions and had owned The Tetrarch, unbeaten in his racing career and later to become an influential sire.

Major McCalmont himself raced a number of top-class performers, among which were the Irish Oaks winner Agar’s Plough, her daughter Mesopotamia who was the best two-year-old filly of her generation, the Coronation Stakes winner Orchestration and many others.

At the time Red Tears was trained by Harry Thomson Jones, more commonly known as Tom Jones. Educated at Eton he took out a trainer’s licence at the age of 26. At the start of his career and for about two decades he trained National Hunt horses and had 12 winners at the Cheltenham Festival.

Over jumps he is probably most famously associated with Tingle Creek and Frenchman’s Cove. The former is commemorated with a race at Sandown Park where he was something of a specialist, while Frenchman’s Cove won the Whitbread Gold Cup in 1962 and the King George VI Chase in 1964. He also won the Welsh Champion Hurdle in 1970 with Frozen Alive and the 1974 Massey-Ferguson Gold Cup with Garnishee.

In the 1970s Jones began to turn his attention to the flat with immediate success. In 1971 he won the St Leger with Athens Wood, ridden by Lester Piggott, and 11 years later won the race again, this time with Touching Wood. This was hugely significant as it was a first classic winner for the Maktoum family, later to become one of the major forces in racing, and that horse also won the Irish St Leger.

Many of Jones’s best horses were owned by Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum, among them the filly Al Bahathri, winner of the Irish 1000 Guineas in 1985. He was instrumental in the Sheikh’s decision to buy Height Of Fashion from the Queen in 1982. Height Of Fashion went on to become one of the outstanding broodmares of her generation, and was the dam of the Derby winner Nashwan.

Jones’s other Group 1 successes included the Yorkshire Oaks with Fleet Wahine in 1971, the Grand Prix de Paris with At Talaq in 1984 and the Ascot Gold Cup in 1990 with Ashal.

The third member of the winning team with Red Tears was Stan Mellor who was in the saddle. In his late twenties at the time of this victory, Mellor was an outstanding rider and the first jockey under National Hunt rules to ride 1,000 winners. The historic victory took place on December 18th, 1971 at Nottingham when Ouzo landed the Christmas Spirit Novices; Chase.

Awarded an MBE for his services to racing, Mellor won the King George VI Chase twice, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the Gloucestershire Hurdle and the Whitbread, Mackeson and Hennessy Cognac Gold Cups as a jockey.

He later embarked on a career as a trainer and had over 700 winners, though he was reputed to have felt that he was too laid back to be successful! Nonetheless he won four races at the Cheltenham Festival, including the Triumph Hurdle twice, firstly with Pollardstown. Royal Mail and Lean Ar Aghaidh, who were both placed in the Grand National, were among his best chasers.

The 1966 Punchestown Festival was a great meeting for trainer Tom Dreaper as he saddled five winners, highlighted by a treble on the middle day. He won the opening novice chase with Muir on the day and that gelding went on to win the Two-Mile Champion Chase at Cheltenham in 1969, having captured the Cathcart Chase the previous year.

Pat Taaffe was the jockey to follow at the meeting, riding a winner on each of the days, while ‘Stan’ Murphy was the only other jockey to ride more than a single winner, being successful for Willie O’Grady on Vaduz and for Phonsie O’Brien on Ulster Ranger.