Northern Emperor defied a nine months absence to win the Guinness Handicap Hurdle at Listowel today, scoring for trainer Val O'Brien and jockey Simon Torrens.

The son of Azamour's last run was 254 days ago, in January, but was today produced in fine fettle when scoring a straightforward win over Not So Simple

Northern Emperor was today registering a second career success and following the race trainer O'Brien stated “it's nice to get another win with him, the ground helps him and he stayed the distance.

“I was worried that he hadn't run since January but thankfully he was fine. We have no race picked out but we'll probably keep him at three miles seeing as he handled it here.

“Hopefully he can go on to win again somewhere. We might try him over fences sometime at the smaller tracks because he's not very big, but he'll be kept hurdling for a while.”