THE 2022 Eventing Ireland campaign concluded last Saturday at the third one-day event to be staged this year in Punchestown where it helped if you were from Co Wexford and you were named after the country’s primary patron saint.

Patrick Whelan had five rides at this end-of-season fixture and won on three of them while placing third and seventh on the other pair. Patrick Byrne had just two rides and brought up a double in two of the Horse Sport Ireland autumn development series classes.

Whelan’s three successes saw him end the season as the leading rider by number of wins, 19, while he also recorded the most cross-country clears (102). Here, the 26-year-old didn’t have too much difficulty in landing the Open EI115 and EI110 classes.

In the former, where he faced just two rivals, Whelan had a fence down show jumping before winning on Edel Nolan’s home-bred Denis Finch Hatton who led the dressage phase on 29.1 penalties. The traditionally bred 12-year-old chesnut gelding by Ghareeb is out of the Kildalton King mare Liberty Dalton who competed at CCI2* level herself.

The Whelan-ridden Dermish Chill, who won the dressage phase of the four-runner EI110 (Open) on 25, also had a fence down show jumping but, with easily the fastest cross-country round (3.6 penalties), regained the lead to win on 32.6.

This was a fourth win this season for Paul Donovan’s Irish Sport Horse gelding Dermish Chill who had finished down the field last time out in the Michael Leonard championship at Ballindenisk due to a poor show jumping round. The six-year-old Chillout gelding was bred by Brian Cleary out of the Ricardo Z mare Kilnamac Poppy.

Mary Rose Cooney’s home-bred ISH gelding Gone West, who was having just his second start under Whelan, recorded his first success in the EI110 when adding 3.2 cross-country time penalties to the winning dressage score of 29 he was awarded by Paula Geiger.

A tall, seven-year-old by West Coast Cavalier, Gone West is out of the unraced thoroughbred mare Timor Tigress (by Seamanship).

“I’ve had a really good year, just brilliant, and hopefully that will continue at Le Lion,” said Whelan.

“Apart from the two horses going to France (Altitu and Piltown OBOS), the others now will be on a bit of a break and then we’ll start making plans for next year. Since the last day we were here, there has been a bit of rain so the going was good with a nice bit of grass cover and there were good cross-country tracks which were up to standard.”