LONG WAY BACK
Elliott faces the tough task of restoring his reputation
GORDON Elliott turns 43 tomorrow but there will be no celebrations at his Cullentra stables in Co Meath. Almost 14 years since he burst onto the stage of jump racing with Silver Birch winning the Grand National at Aintree, Elliott’s world is in turmoil.
The photograph of Elliott straddling a dead horse on his County Meath gallops, has exploded into the world of racing, and beyond, just as the person who yanked the pin from the grenade expected it to.
It’s an appalling moment in time as he appears to be enjoying himself, phone cupped to his ear, fingers raised as a gesture of peace. Underneath Elliott, a stricken animal is dead, shorn of saddle, bridle and dignity.
We don’t know the identity of the horse, whether he was a winner or an also-ran but it doesn’t matter. The back-story to the horse involves a working breeder, a proud owner, maybe owners, a
“There were
calls for him to lose his licence”
doting groom, all of whom would be appalled by the distressing snap.
Elliott knows he should never have posed but he did, and is about to pay a considerable penalty. On Saturday evening when Twitter went into over-drive, the trainer was stunned.
The timing was devastating, two weeks before the Cheltenham Festival where he has saddled 32 winners and been crowned leading trainer – an astonishing feat for the son of a mechanic with no racing background.
Fairyhouse, Aintree and Punchestown are around the corner too, the top jumping meetings of the season which Elliott loves more than any other arena.
He sought counsel with Eddie O’Leary, a loyal owner and steadfast friend.
It was agreed to put out a response on Twitter, in which Elliott acknowledged there was a photo circulating on social media and he was helping the IHRB with their enquiries.
His head spinning, he was heartened to receive O’Leary assurance that the huge Gigginstown House arsenal would be staying put.
An estimated 40 per cent of his string carry the purple and white silks and he’s enjoyed many stellar successes for them, Don Cossack’s Gold Cup, Tiger Roll’s two Grand Nationals among them.
It was a much-needed comfort as the storm began to rage, with social media at its most strident.
There were calls for Elliott to lose his licence, be cast into perdition.
However, this isn’t about fines or even a suspension, rather, it’s all about how the trainer will now be perceived.
While the Irish race-horse industry is generally more pragmatic about the usefulness of horses, across the Irish Sea, horses are regarded as family pets, at times akin to royalty.
And it is from there that the outrage directed at Elliott will be most virulent no matter if his equine welfare record at Cullentra is exemplary.
Animal welfare groups will scream blue murder, local MPs will be petitioned and the British Horseracing Authority will be pressed to take firm action.
The BHA tone yesterday afternoon was forceful as it referenced ‘the shocking picture’ and called on the Irish authorities to take swift action.
As for the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, who oversee the rules and regulations of racing, they’re not known for speedy resolutions, as the recent Charles Byrnes doping case illustrated.
Described in satirical magazine, The Phoenix, as the bowler hats, the IHRB hunkered down yesterday to assess their strategy.
It’s understood that Cliodhna Guy, their head of legal and licensing and compliance, has taken on the brief.
Perhaps Elliott suspected there were dark forces at play as his weekend from hell unfolded. On Saturday, he’d been asked by a newspaper to explain a video on social media that showed him and a group of friends drinking at a pop-up bar inside his stable premises near Longwood.
Elliott insisted the video was doing the rounds and was shot on the Saturday after he returned from Cheltenham last year — the last night all pubs were open before lockdown.
It remains to be seen who stays loyal to Elliott, like Gigginstown have pledged to do.
The Cheveley Park stud, highprofile owners of the likes of Envoi Allen, Ballyadam, Quilixios and Sir Gerhard in the Elliott yard, declined to comment on the situation yesterday. But the weight of public opinion, especially in Britain, may shape a different response in due course.
Elliott may be down but he’s not quite out.
He has to reset, rebuild and restore his name. It will be a long journey, longer than the Aintree National where he first made his reputation as a rising young buck of the racing game. But it’s one he has to take.
“He will have
to reset and rebuild”
WHEN The Simpsons writers turned their caustic eye on Pelé, it illustrated how the Brazilian was viewed in popular culture.
Homer had brought his family to a match between Mexico and Portugal ‘to decide which is the greatest nation on earth.’ Prior to kickoff, Pelé ambles onto the pitch to endorse kitchen greasepaper and leaves with a big bag of cash.
To my generation, Pelé wasn’t just a footballing God. He was also the face of Mastercard. And Viagra. And dozens of other products he lent his dazzling smile to.
Tim Vickery, speaking to Joe Molloy on Off the Ball last week, pointed out that because of his upbringing and past as a shoeshine boy, Pelé would go to his grave worrying about money. It was the best explanation of why he evolved from footballing immortal to a corporate brand.
Unfortunately, Vickery doesn’t contribute to the documentary released on Netflix last week and why Pelé felt the need to become the king of corporate endorsements escapes examination. The film’s endpoint is the moment of his ultimate glory, the 1970 World Cup, and there is a natural conclusion there. It tracks the 13 years, from 1957 to ’70, when he became a demigod during a time of great upheaval in Brazilian society.
Unlike Maradona or Best, much of what has been committed to print and celluloid about Pelé has been hagiography. And he has managed his own mythology. This is evident early on when he talks about his father in tears listening to the 1950 World Cup final, as Uruguay beat Brazil 2-1 to scar a nation. Pelé says he told his dad that he would win the World Cup for him. Within eight years, he had done so as a teenage prodigy.
The opening is jarring as we see a wincing and wheezing Pelé slowly make his way towards a chair with a walking aid. Even if it reminds you that he is now 80 and a result of years of physical abuse on the field, it’s still like seeing Superman with a zimmer frame.
For all his genius on the field, such as scoring a hat-trick against France in the 1958 World Cup as a teenager, he’s almost better known for the goals that he didn’t score.
No player in history is known for goals that were almost scored. The chip from his own half against Czechoslovakia, the dribble around the Uruguayan goalkeeper, Gordon Banks’ astonishing save from his bullet header in 1970. All feature here.
His skill and talent are immortalised and regardless of the doubts over the exact number of goals he scored (there is stunning footage of his 1000th goal for Santos, which came after he was awarded a soft enough penalty which he then scores), Pelé will live on as long as a ball is kicked.
The more interesting aspect of the documentary is when he is placed in the context of the 1964 CIA-backed coup which led to a military dictatorship. It came at the halfway point of his career with Brazil and he’s asked at one point if anything changed. ‘No,’ he replies honestly. ‘Football went on in the same way.’ The viewer is then shown footage of the state violently cracking down on street protests while Pele kept scoring goals for Santos and Brazil.
Pele never overtly backed the dictatorship, but he did offer General Medici plenty of photo opportunities, allowing the military to use the player’s stardust as state propaganda. And while the government passed laws that allowed anyone to be arrested without due cause, they also did everything to ensure Pelé led the 1970 team, down to government officials being part of the backroom team.
Mexico was Pele’s crowning glory, his perfectly-weighed ball to Carlos Alberto for the fourth goal in the final the most famous pass in history. But the way the dictatorship hijacked their achievement sat uneasily with many. ‘I love Pelé, but that won’t stop me criticising him,’ proclaims Paulo Cesar Lima, part of that ’70 team. ‘I thought his behaviour was that of a black person who only said “yes, sir”, who accepts everything and doesn’t answer back. It is something I hold against him because one single statement could have gone a long way in Brazil.’
And that draws unfavourable comparison with Muhammad Ali, who lost his world title and the best years of his career to protest the Vietnam War. However as journalist Juca Kfouri points out, Ali didn’t run the risk of torture for his stance.
Pelé insists that winning the World Cup in 1970 did more for the Brazilian people because things could have got worse if they hadn’t. Maybe. And we are looking back on his career now from the vantage point of 2021 when athletes are almost expected to be activists which is probably unfair. Perhaps, we should just celebrate him for what he was on the field. There’s plenty to celebrate.
TG 4’s marvellous series, Laochra Na Rasaíochta takes a look at a different sort of sporting greatness, as it builds the anticipation ahead of Cheltenham by telling the story of some of Ireland’s greatest racehorses.
There was a particular poignancy last Thursday as Istabraq, probably our greatest-ever hurdler, was one of the subjects.
Istabraq was a sporting superstar at the turn of the Millennium, a horse for whom the course in the Costwolds was his playground. And across this island, thousands would roar at the telly as he came alive and found another gear, as he always did, on the famous hill.
The untimely passing of John Durkan to illness before Istabraq carved his name into the record books with a hat-trick of Champion Hurdles ensured a sadness permeated the success.
And he always brought drama, never more so than before the 2000 Champion Hurdle when there were doubts as to whether he would run up until the off because of a nosebleed.
The genuine affection that jockey Charlie Swan and owner JP McManus have for the horse made the story, a vignette of Celtic Tiger Ireland in many ways, all the more endearing.
‘A statement could have gone a long way in Brazil’