Le Breuil fends off Discorama for Jamie Codd in attritional National Hunt Chase

There was another rousing finish to the Cheltenham Festival's longest race and an eighth success at the meeting for top Irish amateur Jamie Codd, who forced Le Breuil across the line to beat Discorama by just half a length in an incident-packed National Hunt Chase.

The 3m7½f novice chase, in which incredibly only four of the 18 runners completed, was marred by the fatal fall of Ballyward, who was sent off 9-4 favourite and fell at the 17th having survived a bad blunder early in the race.

Le Breuil, owned by Emma Palmer, was a second festival winner for trainer Ben Pauling, who in 2017 landed what was then the Neptune Investment Management Novices' Hurdle with Willoughby Court.

The victory clearly meant a lot to Pauling, who said: "Any festival winner is huge and if all of them felt like this I'd keep training for the rest of my life!"

Explaining how he got the ride, Codd, who won the race on Cause Of Causes in 2015, said: "I thought I might be riding for Gordon [Elliott] but he said to me last week that he was going to run only one in the race and that Lisa [O'Neill] would be riding.

"Myself and Niall Cronin went through the list of entries looking for a possible ride. We came up with Le Breuil and I phoned Tessa Greatrex to get Ben Pauling's number. It all worked out brilliantly.

"What a tough little horse Le Breuil is to jump and gallop in that ground. It was a fair slog. I got a great run around and kept him very wide."

The Paul Nolan-trained Discorama – owned by Stayers' Hurdle favourite Paisley Park's owner Andrew Gemmell and his friend Tom Friel – was finishing second at the festival for the second consecutive year having filled the same slot in the Martin Pipe 12 months earlier.

Finian Maguire, rider of Whisperinthebreeze, who was in front when falling at the 14th, was taken to Southmead Hospital for assessment.

Dr Jennifer Pugh, senior medical officer at the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, said on Tuesday night: "Finian, who has remained conscious throughout and has full movement, has undergone precautionary scans. He will be kept in hospital for observations."

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