Narrow winner It Came To Pass (far side) and Wrong Direction had a great tussle in the hunter chase© Photo Healy Racing
The best finish of the day across either Irish meeting came in the concluding Hunters’ Chase at Cork, with It Came To Pass (9/2) and Wrong Direction (5/2) having a terrific tussle from the second last all the way to the line.
Both horses are locally-trained as well, and the bragging rights on this occasion went to connections of the former, with the O’Sullivan’s It Came To Pass just getting on top in the final strides to score by a head.
Great credit should be accorded the runner-up too, aged nine like the winner but much less experienced.
The pair had it to themselves from some way out, with Oscar Contender (11/2) finishing fourteen lengths further back in third, and the 11/8 favourite Fenno’s Storm in fourth place.
The winner, a half-brother to 2014 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Lord Windermere, started out with that one’s trainer Jim Culloty for whom he won three point-to-points and a hunter chase at Limerick.
He won the Jack Tyner Memorial Hunters’ Chase here on Easter Monday on his first start for Eugene O’Sullivan, and was running a blinder behind Caid Du Berlais when unseating two out in the Champion Hunters' Chase at Punchestown. Shortly after he got the better of On The Fringe at Killarney, but after his summer break he unseated at the first in a point-to-point at Dromahane last weekend.
"We thought he'd need the race and hadn't much done with him as the ground was so soft, said winning trainer Eugene O'Sullivan.
"We ran him last Sunday but he was too fresh and fell at the first and we were riding him to get home today and she (daughter and winning jockey Maxine) gave him a fabulous ride.
"We'll look to Christmas next and the Foxhunters at Cheltenham is where we want to go.
"The owner is a lovely man from England who is with me all his life and is after an operation and he wants one shot at Cheltenham and that's where we are going.
"We weren't ready in time last year and he is qualified this year and that's the plan."
Additional reporting by Thomas Weekes
