Counter Punch came again after being headed at the second-last fence to win by a length and a-quarter from stablemate Yourtheman.
It was a repeat of the Koral Steeplechase a week earlier.
Counter Punch gave Oulaghan his third Grand National Steeplechase win and rider Isaac Lupton his second.
Oulaghan won the race with Deecee Seven in 1997 and 1998.
Lupton rode the 2007 winner, Gauchito Bastado.
"I might go to the Northern Hurdles with Counter Punch. I don't know what I will do with Yourtheman," Oulaghan said.
The Northern Hurdles is at Ellerslie on September 4. Cuchulainn, winner of the National Steeplechase in 2003, won the Northern Hurdles 10 months later when the race was run in June.
Gauchito Bastado, the 2007 National winner, won a maiden hurdles at Oamaru at his next start two years later.
Counter Punch, who won the 2007 Grand National Hurdles, has not raced over hurdles since he won the Wellington Hurdles last year.
He ran third to Just Not Cricket and Pasco in the 2007 Northern Hurdles.
Counter Punch is unbeaten in four steeplechases, all at Riccarton.
He has won six times over hurdles and twice on the flat from 45 starts for $222,066 in stakes.
Oulaghan shares the ownership with Aroha Duncan and Jim Speedy, of Feilding and Michael Ormsby, of Hastings.
The same owners raced Miniskirt.
Duncan recalled buying Counter Punch for $6000 as a 2yr-old at the 2002 South Island sale after Miniskirt won a $20,000 race six days earlier on the first day of the National meeting.
The son of Yamanin Vital and the Tawfiq mare Tripartite was offered by breeders Brian and Lorraine Anderton, of White Robe Lodge stud, North Taieri.
"I liked the breeding. It is staying blood," Oulaghan said.
"I had his brother, Irish Nation, who went to Ireland but broke down there."
Oulaghan paid $12,000 for Irish Nation at the 2001 festival sale at Karaka and won two flat races with the gelding.
Irish Nation was from the second crop of Yamanin Vital, the Sir Tristram stallion, who died last October after bowel complications.
He is also the sire of Hypnotize, winner of the Great Northern Steeplechase in 2007 and 2008 and Yourtheman (Grand National Hurdles, Waikato Hurdles and Hawkes Bay Steeplechase).
Hypnotize, also a White Robe product, is bred on the same cross as Counter Punch and he has been ridden in his major wins by Lupton.
