Heart Wood (Choeur Du Nord) wins the O’Driscolls Handicap Chase at Leopardstown impressively for Robour, Henry de Bromhead and Rachael Blackmore.
Heart Wood, was winning for the first time over fences having shaped well when finishing second on all three starts (once in November 2022 and two in the same month of 2023) over the larger obstacles since arriving from France.
De Bromhead said “Delighted with that, he was really good there. Rachael was brilliant on him. Delighted to win the O’Driscolls, Michael Stafford is a great supporter of ours and it’s fantastic to win his race.
“I don’t know about plan but you’re making it sound like a good plan anyhow, it certainly looks like one now! He had a couple of nice runs and in fairness it seemed a reasonable mark. Delighted he’s got his head in front today.
“We said we’d aim for today and we’ll enjoy it.”
Blackmore added: “It was great to get him to do that today. The owners have had to be very patient with him, he’s had his problems. He’s a really nice horse.
“Everyone got him back in good shape and we were very hopeful coming here today on the back of those two runs and he jumped and he travelled and it all unfolded well for him.
