THE second and final Eventing Ireland one-day of the season at the Wilding family’s Rosanna House was held last Saturday when the heavy rain which was forecast failed to arrive but there was no holding back the wave of riders from outside the Garden County who won the unrestricted classes.

It was unfortunate for the organisers that the event at Ballindenisk the following day featured one of the season’s rare EI120 classes so many riders bypassed the Co Wicklow event in favour of that in Co Cork. Not so however, Co Wexford’s Patrick Whelan who rode five horses at both fixtures and won a pair of two-runner classes here.

In the match for honours in the EI115, Whelan’s completion score on the Irish Sport Horse gelding Piltown OBOS (44.1) included 4.4 cross-country time penalties and four for a pole down show jumping.

In the Horse Sport Ireland Studbook series EI115 for seven-year-olds, Paul Donovan’s ISH gelding Dermish Chill picked up 8.4 time penalties over the fixed fences while he too lowered a fence for a total of 45.8.

The eight-year-old OBOS Quality 004 gelding Piltown OBOS is one of five horses Whelan has entered in the CCI4*-S at Kilguilkey House next week which means he will miss Fastnet Rovers’ awards night. “I wouldn’t be getting one anyway!” the keen soccer player stated with conviction. The Chillout grey, Dermish Chill, is heading for the CCI3*-S in Jardy, France (July 13th to 16th) where his stable-companions, Sportsfield Cooper and MBF Silver Bridge, are both entered in the CCI2*-S.

“I need to get those younger horses qualified for Le Lion and I think the trip in general will do them good,” said Whelan who will be making his Jardy debut. “I’ll learn how they all deal with the travelling and they will have the experience of competing on a big occasion. I think the horses I’ve ridden at Le Lion in the past have all lacked that so they were surprised by the crowds and noise.”

On their dressage score (27.5 penalties), Whelan and Carrie Meehan’s Scarteen winner MBF Silver Bridge, a bay son of Silvano out of a thoroughbred mare, had to settle for second in the nine-runner HSI Studbook series EI110 for six-year-olds behind the all-the-way winner, the ISH gelding CJO Kann Surprise (23).

The latter, who had filled the runner-up slot behind his stable companion, Strangford, in similar company at Clonmahon House a week earlier, is ridden by Steven Smith for Caroline Overend and Carla Leitch, whose late husband and father, Trevor Overend, bred the Kannan bay. Winner of the five-year-old young event horse class at the Dublin Horse Show last August and, shortly before then, of an EI100 at Loughanmore, CJO Kann Surprise, who has 18 Show Jumping Ireland points to his credit, is out of CJO Curiosity Lux (by Lux Z).

The very much in-form Caitie Slater had just two rides on Saturday for her retaining yard of Richard Ames’ Belline Equestrian, both traditionally-bred ISH geldings lining out in the 10-runner HSI Studbook Series EI100 for five-year-olds. Slater made them count when, on her dressage scores, she finished first and second on Belline Imperial Diamond (26.8 penalties), who led throughout, and JFH Golden Spear (28.8). Wexford Junior rider Georgina Pettit picked up two costly cross-country time penalties to place third with BCL Belletastic (29.3).

Belline Imperial Diamond, who had, like some others on Saturday, won at Rosanna (1), was a second winner on the day for Co Monaghan breeder Amelia Comiskey. The bay, who is by Comiskey’s ISH stallion Imperial Hights, is out of the Lester Lad mare Diamond Beaker.