Winged Leader and Barry O'Neill© Photo Healy Racing
Winged Leader followed up on point-to-point wins at Kirkistown and Farmacaffley when impressively justifying even money favouritism in the Hamilton Architects Hunters Chase at Down Royal.
Regular rider and three time champion point-to-point jockey, Barry O’Neill, was in the plate on David Christie’s runner.
Winged Leader led, and he was joined three out. The promising six-year-old led again two out, asserting before the last, to easily account for Alpha Male Eight and a half lengths separated them.
"He has really come of age this year. Last year myself and Barry (O'Neill) took quite a lot of stick when he got beat a couple of times,” said Christie.
"He was nearly kind of bolting and running away. It would have been so easy to turn him into a horse that you could only run flat out with.
"We rode him out the back, and rode him out the back, and a couple of times we let him down when he got there to win it and he just came second, and we took a lot of stick about it.
"It was the making of him. That's a year in getting him settled, there's a lot of work has gone into that horse - from Barry riding him to ourselves at home.
"He's only a six-year-old and he is a proper horse. I have ambitions with him. The whole thing with him was never to get too carried away and just take it wee steps at a time. If we did that, the horse would come to us. If we did the opposite we would ruin him.
"I'm delighted for the horse and for us.
"In a normal year you would be thinking of the Joseph O'Reilly or Punchestown. He is ready for that but now we are in a situation where we don't know what we are doing with plans.
"It is great that he has put that under his belt now - great for him, great for the owners and for us to have something to build on."
(MG & EM)
