28th-Dec-2022

I am taking a chance on Home By The Lee in the Christmas Hurdle.

Joseph O’Brien’s horse definitely didn’t get the recognition that he was due for winning the Lismullen Hurdle at Navan last time.  If that run were to be taken at face value, he wouldn’t be a bigger price than the horses that he beat that day for the Christmas Hurdle.

He is quirky for sure, he was being ridden along in the Lismullen Hurdle with a circuit to go, but some of the best staying hurdlers hit flat spots, Big Buck’s, Inglis Drever, Paisley Park.  And the two-and-a-half-mile trip of the Lismullen Hurdle was probably on the sharp side for him.

He proved in the Galmoy Hurdle last year, when he finished a close-up second to Royal Kahala, that he could stay three miles well, and he probably would have won at Down Royal in November had he not been short of room at the second last and run out.

He is only seven and, with that win in the Lismullen Hurdle now on the board, it may be that he can find some consistency.  He has been well beaten in both his runs at Leopardstown, and that is a worry, but there is a chance that he has just turned a corner now, that he is a different horse now, and that chance is worth taking at the price.

HOME BY THE LEE WON (ADV 6/1, SP 7/1)