Replay Review: Heart Wood Steps Up to Win Ryanair Chase After Fact To File Withdrawal

The 2026 Ryanair Chase became a completely different race on the morning of St Patrick’s Thursday when it was confirmed that odds-on favourite Fact To File trained by Willie Mullins and winner of last year’s renewal by nine lengths had been withdrawn. The field that remained was still competitive, but the narrative of the day shifted to whether Jonbon (Nicky Henderson/JP McManus) could finally shed his Cheltenham Festival hoodoo, and to whether Henry de Bromhead’s Heart Wood, runner-up to Fact To File in 2025, was good enough in his own right.

The replay provides clear answers to both questions.

Before the Gates Open

With Fact To File gone, Jonbon became the clear 2/1 market leader. The Nicky Henderson-trained nine-year-old had repeatedly delivered at the highest level away from Cheltenham and this looked, on paper, the most favourable conditions he was likely to encounter at the Festival over his career.

Heart Wood, trained by de Bromhead and ridden by Darragh O’Keeffe, was supported down to 9/2. His form profile included that second-place finish behind Fact To File in 2025 and a profile suggesting he appreciated a good tempo.

Reading the Replay

JPR One made the early running, setting a strong pace around the first circuit. Heart Wood tracked comfortably in a prominent position, O’Keeffe riding confidently and not expending energy unnecessarily. Jonbon, ridden by Nico de Boinville, sat just off the leaders and appeared to be travelling within himself through the early fences.

The first concerns with Jonbon emerge visibly around the back straight on the final circuit. The horse, usually so assured in his jumping, begins to look slightly untidy at his fences, losing rhythm at the point in the race where a Champion Chase winner would expect to be cruising. His jumping, as the Sporting Life analysis noted, “rather went to pieces late on.”

The Critical Phase

Turning for home, Heart Wood’s superior travelling became emphatic. O’Keeffe drew level with JPR One before the final bend and from that point the race had one outcome. On the run to the last, Heart Wood was clear and jumping soundly; Jonbon was being pushed along without the response his jockey needed.

The winning margin of ten lengths, to Jonbon, was significant. It was not a case of Heart Wood being fortunate; he ran to a Timeform timefigure of 165, a career best, and would have been competitive against Fact To File in the same conditions on the evidence of his jumping and travelling.

Jonbon’s Festival Record

Jonbon’s record at the Cheltenham Festival is a long and painful story for connections. He has now run at the Festival multiple times without winning on each occasion finding something to thwart him whether through the competition or his own performance. That he has “matched 165 several times before, albeit not at Cheltenham,” as Timeform noted, is the crux of the issue: he is a horse that appears to underperform at the specific demands of Prestbury Park’s course and atmosphere.

Aftermath and Timeform Rating

Heart Wood’s 165 timefigure represents a career-best and places him firmly among the leading middle-distance chasers in training. The question that will shape the next chapter is, as Sporting Life posed it, what might have been had Fact To File taken his chance in either the Ryanair or the Gold Cup, having beaten both Heart Wood and Gaelic Warrior in the preceding 12 months.

De Bromhead described the win as “brilliant” and was full of praise for O’Keeffe’s ride, acknowledging that the result was bittersweet given the earlier loss of their long-serving festival star Envoi Allen, who collapsed and died following the Gold Cup later the same afternoon.