Cheltenham Festival day 3: What we learned as Home By The Lee wins Stayers’ Hurdle
HOME RUN: JJ Slevin on Home By The Lee comes home to win the Stayers' Hurdle. Pic: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
Good things come to those who wait apparently, and good things indeed came to the O’Driscoll clan whose origin story is in Drimoleague in West Cork.
This time last year they travelled to Cheltenham with their beloved family pet, Home by the Lee, hoping that his fourth visit to the festival for The Stayers Hurdle would bring him a deserved victory.
Their hopes only lasted as far as the sixth hurdle when JJ Slevin was unseated from the fancied 13/2 shot and, sadly, it looked as if the horses Cheltenham story was moving into the rear-view mirror.
But his owner, Sean O’Driscoll, trainer Joseph O’Brien and jockey JJ Slevin are patient people. They waited again for the spring to come and brought him back for a fifth crack at the race and this time the unfancied 33/1 shot ran prominently towards the front with that other national treasure Hewick and utilised his boundless stamina to repel Ballyburn and last year’s winner, Bob Ollinger to prevail by a length and a quarter.
Speaking after the race, Sean O’Driscoll, who also bred Home By The Lee said after the race said; “Willie Mullins came up to me to congratulate me on the way in; he trained the first runner we ever had at Cheltenham, and he was running a belter in the Albert Bartlett and he came down at the last. That hardens you for Cheltenham. It’s so difficult to win here. I’ll dine out on this for a while!
“We came here with confidence, but the odds were stacked against us in that he’s 11 years of age, it was his fifth attempt at the race, I don’t think any horse has won it after running in it five times - the moral of the story is that there’s always a first time!”
A first time that is, if you’re prepared to wait.
What Sean O’Driscoll hadn’t seen during his joyous winner’s enclosure celebrations among his family was that Willie Mullins almost got knocked over by the Home By The Lee in his rush to shake the winning owner’s hand.
Mullins would have been disappointed by the defeat of his Ballyburn who finished second but that didn’t stop him from doing the right thing at the right time.
He wasn’t that genteel earlier when his dissatisfaction with the preparation of the track caused him to withdraw the odds-on chance and returning champion, Fact To File from the Ryanair Chase because he was worried that the ground conditions were a threat to his horse. He blamed the good ground for the defeat of his good novice mare Bambino Fever in the first race.
“In jumps racing we would like soft in the description of the ground,” he told Racing TV, “and we think good ground is not good enough for the type of individual we are buying and trying to race. You want to have the top horses at the best festival, but if the ground is like this, we are not going to bring them.”
Fact To File’s owner JP McManus was equally miffed with the condition of the track. He had personally walked it earlier in the day and told ITV that he would “leave it to Willie, but I can overrule him,” and added, “I've walked the track every day, they've done a great job, but I think they could have done more, especially at the top of the track.” In the end it was an easy decision to make, and it was another stark example of the pressure that the festival organisers endure to try please everybody.
