DELAYED a week in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn, the Western Region of Eventing Ireland got their 2025 combined training league under way last Sunday.

Blue skies greeted competitors at the Milchem Equestrian Centre in Tynagh of regional chairman Ralph Conroy, who had engaged Sue Ryan as dressage judge, Alex Kenny as scribe and Jane Duffy as judge of the action over the flowing show jumping tracks he himself had designed and built.

Clifden’s Sadhbh O’Toole won Section A of the EI80 CT on Dawns Sherlock, the Irish Sports Pony, who picked up 12 Dressage Ireland points in his only two outings last season. The Lucarelli five-year-old was bred at home by O’Toole’s mother, Olivia Staunton, out of the family’s late Connemara mare, Clochanard Dawn (by Libero Justice), who Sadhbh partnered in the show ring from the age of five having both, coincidentally, been born the same week.

When asked about plans for her bay gelding, O’Toole replied: “We had such a fun day out on Sunday that we will definitely be participating in more legs of the combined training league and I also plan on doing a couple of legs of the eventing starter series when it begins in March. On the dressage front, he will be taking part in the Dressage Ireland national winter finals in April at Preliminary level and I’ll then step him up to Novice over the summer. It’s his first full year competing and I’m trying to give him as much experience as possible.”

Caroline Lynch in action at the first leg of the combined training league at Milchem Equestrian \ Sagittarian Photography

Co Meath’s Caroline Lynch also led from start to finish to claim Section B, with her own and Robert McHugh’s Irish Draught mare Hio Easter Rose (26.25 penalties) who has 17 DI points and three Show Jumping Ireland points to her credit. Bred in Co Wicklow by Messrs Webster and Chapman, the five-year-old Moylough Bouncer grey is out of the Clonakilty Hero mare Hio Mayo Rose.

The best-supported class of the day, the EI90 CT, in which there were 22 entries, was won on her Ryan-awarded dressage score (24.5 penalties) by Belgium-born, Co Westmeath-based Elise Morel riding Pom d’Api.

Katie Gibbons, daughter of regional secretary Marie Dunne, dominated the EI100 CT, where she was left out in front when the dressage winners on 22.3 penalties, Sophie Cusack and Clareville Codiac, had a fence down show jumping.

With two clear rounds, Gibbons claimed the spoils on board Ralph Conroy’s home-bred ISH gelding Milchem Watermill (24.3 penalties), the 11-year-old Watermill Swatch bay with whom she was placed numerous times under Eventing Ireland rules last season, and finished second on Dunne’s ISH gelding Milchem Free Spirit (aka Feebs).

The latter, a 13-year-old daughter of Contra A was campaigned last season by Gibbons’s brother Godfrey, who placed eighth of 49 with her in the CCI3*-S at Millstreet.

The sole starter in the EI115 CT was Co Westmeath’s Emily O’Reilly, who completed on her dressage score (30.3 penalties) with her mother Anne Marie’s Anglo European Studbook-registered Million Dollar Baby OS, a nine-year-old grey gelding by Flugel M who she has competed with SJI since July 2023.