Home By The Lee

The numbers tell a story of quiet, sustained excellence. Six wins and 11 places from 21 races — he has finished in the first three almost 81% of the time, winning roughly 1 in every 3½ races across his career. At Navan, where it all started back in November 2022, he has won 2 from 3, making it something close to a home fixture. But it is on wet ground where he truly comes alive: 3 wins from just 4 races on soft or muddy ground, a 75% win rate that is almost absurd. When the heavens open, this horse gets better.

His trainer Joseph Patrick O'Brien, whose yard at Owning Hill has sent out 154 winners this season alone, is refreshingly straightforward about what makes Home By The Lee tick: stamina and a will to win. He ran at Gowran Park earlier this season giving weight to a rival who has since proved himself a very good horse, and O'Brien felt it was as good a performance as Home By The Lee has produced in his Grade 1-winning days. The Cheltenham win four weeks ago, delivered by his regular jockey J J Slevin — who has partnered him to 4 of his 6 career wins — only reinforced that view. O'Brien noted pointedly that the horse has never really had a true slog at Cheltenham, the kind of gruelling, stamina-sapping race that would suit him perfectly.

That is the fascinating detail lurking in his record. He has run in six top-level Class 1 races and, on paper, won none of them — yet O'Brien is talking openly about a top-four or five chance in the Stayers' Hurdle, the championship race for horses exactly like this one. Last season he was brought down when the yard felt it was genuinely his best shot at the prize. He is back. He is in form. He won at the track four weeks ago. At 11, Home By The Lee is not winding down — he is building up.