gordon elliott
David Cormack takes a close look at how one of Ireland’s ‘big two’ trainers have fared at the Cheltenham Festival
Reviewing the Irish trainer’s remarkable Cheltenham record
Gordon Elliott has been the leading trainer at the last two Cheltenham Festivals, capping a meteoric rise to the head of his profession. The 2018 Festival was the 13th to which Elliott has sent runners and during that time he has won 22 races at jumps racing’s premier meeting.
Elliott, who will still be only 41 when this year’s Festival gets underway, is compiling a record at the meeting that has already overtaken the likes of David Nicholson (17 winners) and is fast approaching the tally set by his mentor and former employer Martin Pipe (34 winners). While he remains some way behind his great rival Willie Mullins, who has trained a record number of 61 Cheltenham Festival winners and is likely to train many more, it’d take a brave man to bet that Elliott won’t surpass Mullins at some point in the future.
2006
Elliott’s Cheltenham odyssey started in 2006 when he saddled 100/1 shot Brandon Mountain for the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle. It was about as inauspicious start as he could have made as Brandon Mountain, having his first, and last, run for Elliott, struggled to keep up and was pulled up after jumping three hurdles.
At that point Elliott had not trained a winner, anywhere, and his taking Brandon Mountain to Cheltenham somehow flagged the burning ambition the fledgling trainer possessed. This was where Elliott wanted to be, he wanted to mix it with the best.
2007
He’d have to wait another five years after that first runner for that first Cheltenham winner but, at this point still without a winner in his native Ireland, he was back at the Gloucestershire track for the 2007 Festival. This time, although still represented by only one runner, he was armed with a more potent weapon in the ex-Paul Nicholls chaser Silver Birch who would line up in the Cross Country Chase.
Silver Birch had run three times for Elliott prior to his Cheltenham Cross Country run and had warmed up for the Festival with a run over hurdles at Punchestown. At Cheltenham he ran a grand race, finishing second to the Nina Carberry ridden, Enda Bolger trained, Heads Onthe Ground. Silver Birch had rallied after the last and, with hindsight, it was a race that signalled he was no back number and the run perhaps should have given greater encouragement to punters for his next race than it did.
In those days, however, the Cross Country wasn’t a particularly well recognised Grand National trial route and when he turned up at Aintree a few weeks later for the big race Silver Birch was allowed to start at 33/1. But he belied those odds and in so-doing catapulted the name of his young trainer into national prominence.
There was an under-stated confidence about Elliott, not arrogance but rather a discernible surety of purpose, evident in the lead up to and in the aftermath of that historic win at Aintree. That surety, combined with an equally observable ambition, was attractive to owners, as was an obvious talent for both training and placing his horses. The winners started to flow a bit more freely but he would still have to wait a few more years to realise his burning ambition to train a Cheltenham festival winner.
2008
In 2008 he again had only one runner at the Festival when Roman Villa lined up under Timmy Murphy in the County Hurdle. The former Roger Charlton and Jessica Harrington six year old had shown signs of ability for Elliott, winning at Musselburgh the previous November, but he finished a well beaten twelfth in the County Hurdle and never won again.
2009
In 2009 Elliott was double-handed at the Festival for the first time. Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud enterprise was to play a pivotal role in Elliott’s future success and the Triumph Hurdle contender Tharawaat was Elliott’s first
Cheltenham runner for O’Leary. He finished tenth and there was no better news to come in the Foxhunters Chase on the same day as Elliott’s other runner at the meeting, Dublin Hunter, finished a remote 16th.
2010
By 2010 Elliott was continuing to climb racing’s ladder and took four horses to the Festival, including Silver Birch, back for another crack at the Cross Country, and Chicago Grey, who would line up in the Coral Cup. It was a bridge too far for the fading Silver Birch who was well down the field and Chicago Grey failed to get into the top twenty in his assignment.
It was left to Carlito Brigante to salvage something tangible in the Triumph Hurdle and, for the first time in his career, Elliott found himself training a favourite at the Cheltenham Festival. In the event Carlito Brigante wasn’t quite up to winning but he made sure Elliott took some prize money home for only the second time in the five seasons the trainer had taken horses to the meeting by finishing a good fourth.
Later in 2010 Elliott won Europe’s richest flat handicap, York’s Ebor, with Dirar and there was no longer any doubt in the racing world that here was a talent that was to be reckoned with.
2011
2011 saw Elliott attack the Festival with his strongest team to date, doubling his 2010 contingent with 8 horses representing him. On day one Tharawaat, back for a second crack at the meeting, finished a fair sixth in the Novices’ Handicap Chase. It was a reasonable start to the meeting but Elliott, with just two placed efforts in five years, was still waiting for that Cheltenham breakthrough.
Despite those Grand National and Ebor wins, Cheltenham Festival success is what jumps racing these days largely judges its heroes on. Elliott, ambition burning bright, must have arrived at the course on day two of that 2011 Festival full of both hope and trepidation as he fielded his strongest ever selection of candidates in any single day at the meeting. In Chicago Grey, Jessies Dream, Carlito Brigante and Plan A he had horses who were all fancied to not only run well but all four had serious winning chances.
First up was Chicago Grey, in the four miler, the National Hunt Chase. Starting favourite, he was taken down to the start early and once they were under way his jockey, top Irish amateur Derek O’Connor, held him up at the back. Later in the race the pair started to make steady progress and O’Connor gradually and patiently crept through the field, taking up a challenging position 2 out. From that point the result was never in much doubt and Chicago Grey stormed up the hill to win by four and a half lengths from Beshabar.
Just over an hour later ecstasy would turn to agony as Jessies Dream just failed by a neck in the RSA Chase but two races later Carlito Brigante would make up for that narrow defeat in spades by taking the Coral Cup under Davy Russell. A red letter day for the yard ended with Plan A running a respectable fourth in the Fred Winter.
Gordon Elliott had arrived and could finally add ‘Cheltenham Festival winning trainer’ to his CV, not once, but twice.
2012/2013
Any illusions that Cheltenham winners were going to be any easier now that the duck had been broken were quickly dispelled as it was another two years and 18 runners before Elliott was
back in the winner’s enclosure at jumps racing’s biggest meeting. This time it was Flaxen Flare who came good in the Fred Winter, Elliott’s sole winner from 11 runners in 2013, following on from a blank year in 2012 where two placed efforts were all the yard had to show from 9 attempts.
Elliott had bought his own training yard and he had started saddling runners from the new location, Cullentra, in 2012. But his spiralling ascent through the training ranks had stalled slightly. In the 2010/11 season he’d trained 62 winners in Ireland but failed to match that number in any of the following three seasons. Elliott had long been an advocate of sending horses to run in the UK but he’d been struggling to make numerical improvement there either. Had he reached his level?
2014
Approaching the end of the 2014 season Elliott had firmly established himself as a trainer to be reckoned with but still couldn’t be considered, at that stage, to have reached the very top. The likes of Mullins, Henderson and Nicholls were the trainers everyone else measured their success against and Elliott, although now starting to snap at their heels, didn’t have the depth of talent to consistently challenge in the very top races.
All that was soon to change and Elliott’s 2014 Cheltenham armoury, although we didn’t know it at the time, contained several horses that would eventually be key players in establishing him in training’s elite division, winning a series of important races between them in years to come.
First of his 7 runners that year was Don Cossack in the RSA Chase. It was an inauspicious Festival debut for Don Cossack, who fell at the 14th fence when travelling well. Clarcam was another faller, travelling OK and looking ready to challenge when falling two out in the Fred Winter. Cause Of Causes hit the crossbar when second in the Kim Muir under Nina Carberry and it looked like being another frustrating, fruitless Cheltenham for Elliott. However, on the final day of the meeting, the juvenile hurdler Tiger Roll came to the rescue, winning the Triumph Hurdle under Davy Russell. Those four horses would, in future years, number a Cheltenham Gold Cup, a Grand National, five more Cheltenham Festival wins and a Galway Plate between them, among other prizes.
2015
That Triumph Hurdle win for Tiger Roll was Cheltenham winner number four for the yard and in 2015 they added one more when Cause Of Causes, who’d gone so close in the Kim Muir the previous year, won the National Hunt Chase, the stable’s second win in the race following Chicago Grey’s victory four years earlier. Elliott was beginning to significantly increase the numbers of horses in his yard and that was reflected at Cheltenham where they had 15 representatives. Notable among his other runners that year were Don Cossack, third in the Ryanair after making a mistake which may well have cost him the race, Bless The Wings, who finished second in the Kim Muir, and No More Heroes, who looked every inch a future star when third in the Albert Bartlett. They finished the meeting by going close with Noble Endeavour, who finished second in the Martin Pipe.
While a Cheltenham winner would be a dream come true for most trainers Elliott’s single winner in 2015 was put into context by Willie Mullins who racked up 8 winners at the meeting. If Elliott was to achieve his ambition of challenging Mullins it was clear he still had some way to go.
2016
The 2016 Festival marked another milestone for Elliott as he not only usurped his previous best (the two winners trained in 2011) by saddling three winners, taking his festival total to eight, he also recorded his first win in one of the meeting’s blue riband events, winning the biggest prize of all, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, with Don Cossack.
By the time the Gold Cup came around Elliott had already notched up two winners courtesy of Diamond King in the Coral Cup and another Festival win for Cause Of Causes, this time in the Kim Muir, a race Elliott was clearly fond of targeting and which Cause Of Causes had himself finished runner up in two years earlier.
But the meeting, for Elliott, had largely revolved around Don Cossack’s Gold Cup bid. Since his third in the Ryanair the previous year Don Cossack was unbeaten in all five starts in which he’d completed, his only reverse coming in the 2015 King George VI Chase where he’d fallen two out when in contention. At Cheltenham there was a heavy weight of expectation on his shoulders and he went off 9/4 favourite from Cue Card, who’d won the King George, at 5/2. Next in the betting were the Mullins trained pair Djakadam and Don Poli.
Don Cossack’s task may well have been made easier by the fall of Cue Card, who was still in strong contention when falling three out, but the Elliott trained horse won with a fair bit of authority in the end from Djakadam. Sadly, it was to prove Don Cossack’s last ever race but if there is a way to bow out, a win in the Cheltenham Gold Cup is it.
In addition to the three winners, second placed efforts from Fagan (Albert Bartlett) and Bless the Wings (Cross Country Chase) ensured a highly satisfactory meeting for Cullentra. Bless The Wings, following the path taken by Silver Birch eight years earlier, followed up his second place finish in the Cross Country by going to a Grand National. In Bless The Wings’ case in 2016 it was the Irish version of the National, and he failed by only the very narrowest of margins, going down by a short head to Rogue Angel.
It was Elliott’s best Cheltenham numerically and he’d begun to close the gap on Willie Mullins, who was champion trainer at the meeting once again with 7 winners. In the 2016/17 season, however, events would turn the tide in Elliott’s favour.
In September of 2016 the racing world was rocked when it was announced that a dispute over training fees had led to Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud operation removing all 60 of the horses they had in training with Willie Mullins from his yard. They were dispersed among a variety of trainers but Elliott was clearly a trainer Gigginstown wanted onside and he received a third of the draft plus the lion’s share of the new horses Gigginstown were to put into training going forward.
Mullins had significant firepower from other leading owners, notably Rich Ricci who owned the yard’s four best horses at that time in Vautour, Annie Power , Faugheen and Douvan, all still at their peak, but the move was still a hammer-blow to Mullins and a huge opportunity for Elliott. It was one he would take full advantage of.
2017
Having had three winners from 19 runners in 2016, Elliott saddled 29 horses at the 2017 Festival, by far his highest representation thus far. The early morning Cheltenham gallops, where the Irish contingent exercise their horses each morning of the Festival meeting, had been dominated by the Mullins battalion in previous years but in 2017 anyone on the gallop in the early morning mist couldn’t fail to notice a sizeable shift as Elliott was also now arriving onto the centre of the course each morning with an impressive string of horses under his command.
With the large string and the top owners comes a weight of expectation and Elliott needed to deliver. By the end of the meeting no one was in any doubt about his ability to get the job done on racing’s biggest stage as he not only matched Mullins, the pair having six winners apiece, but wrested the meeting’s leading trainer title from his great rival by dint of a better number of runner-up spots.
The meeting couldn’t have started any better for Elliott with an opening day treble courtesy of Labaik’s win in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, Apple Jade’s win in the Mare’s Hurdle and Tiger Roll’s win in the National Hunt Chase, a race in which Elliott was excelling in.
On day two the yard notched up another double courtesy of Cause Of Causes, enjoying his third successive win at the Festival, this time in the Cross Country Chase (stablemate Bless The Wings was once again runner-up in the race) and the ill-fated Fayonagh, who took the Champion
there will be few in that great arena with the passion, drive, and sheer will to succeed of the young, selfmade man
Bumper in dramatic style having raced virtually in last place for much of the race. Once again the Cross Country signalled Grand National ambitions for the Elliott trained pair Cause Of Causes and Bess The Wings, the former going on to run into second place behind One For Arthur at Aintree while the latter was to finish runner-up for the second year in succession in the Irish National.
At this point Elliott was leading Mullins 5-0 and the title race looked over but Willie Mullins fought back on day three, taking the opening JLT Novices’ Chase with Yorkhill. By the end of the day Mullins had hit back resoundingly at those critics who were beginning to whisper that he may be a spent force by taking a further three races and reducing the deficit to just one going into the final day.
In the opener Mega Fortune was second for Elliott in the Triumph Hurdle, a result that would be decisive by the end of the day. Mullins then evened up the score at 5 all as Arctic Fire took the County Hurdle.
Death Duty appeared to have a big shout in the Albert Bartlett for Elliott but fell, handing the race, and the advantage in the trainer’s battle, to Mullins who won the race with Penhill.
Both trainers had chances in the penultimate race, the Martin Pipe Conditional Riders Handicap Hurdle, but it was Elliott who came good as Champagne Classic took the prize and secured the trainer’s title with Mullins having no runners in the final race and, with the score tied at 6 all, Elliott had a higher number of runners-up. The Martin Pipe was a race Elliott was keen to win as he’d spent time with Pipe learning his trade and clearly holds his former mentor in the highest regard and there were happy scenes in the winner’s enclosure after the race.
Gordon Elliott had shown back in 2011 that he was a force to be reckoned with but now he’d shown himself equal to the task of usurping Mullins, for some years the dominant force in British and Irish racing. Elliott was no longer looking up at the top table of the sport, he now had his own seat up there with the best of them.
2018
The thing with being at the top, according to the top sportsmen, is that it can be hard to stay there but, having doubled his previous best Festival tally in 2017, Elliott arrived suitably mobhanded at Prestbury Park for the 2018 renewal vowing to do his utmost to retain his crown. He was numerically well represented, saddling 32 runners over the four days, an increase of three from 2017.
Day one did not go well. Three third placed finishes in the first three races (including a Champion Hurdle third place for Mick Jazz) was a reasonable start but things quickly turned sour as all four of his runners in the later races failed to finish. As if things were not going badly enough the talented Mossback was fatally injured in the National Hunt Chase.
Day two started on a much brighter note as Samcro lived up to his sky-high reputation by winning the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle. The day continued in that vein as Veneer Of Charm created an upset at 33/1 in the Fred Winter and Tiger Roll then cemented a treble and yet another great afternoon for the yard with a win in the Cross Country.
Elliott’s by-now well established route from Cross Country Chase to Grand National was followed by Tiger Roll and he managed to follow in Silver Birch’s hoofprints by winning at Aintree on a memorable day for Gigginstown, Elliott and, most of all perhaps, jockey Davy Russell who was enjoying his first Grand National winner.
The second day didn’t all go to plan, despite the three winners, as another four of the yard’s runners failed to get round. While three winners in the first two days would more than satisfy most trainers it looked like the leading trainer’s title was heading back the way of Willie Mullins.
Mullins had sent out no fewer than five winners by that stage and had three seconds to go with it. In a reverse of the previous year’s battle, it was Elliott who went into the final two days playing catch up.
Day three started with Elliott firing on all cylinders. He took the opener, the JLT Novices’ Chase, with the mare
Shattered Love and followed up in the next race, the Pertemps Final, with Delta Work.
That levelled the score with Mullins and it was all to play for. But Mullins wasn’t finished and Penhill won the Stayer’s Hurdle to edge himself back into the lead. Elliott retaliated with The Storyteller in the Plate before Mullins struck back and took the lead again courtesy of the odds on Laurina in the Mare’s Novice Hurdle.
With five winners of the seven races on the third day and 13 winners in the bag with one day still to go the developing story of the 2018 Festival was the domination of the Elliott/Mullins axis in particular and the Irish runners generally. Going into the final day the score for the meeting stood at 15-6 in favour of the Irish.
The English trainers managed to stage a comeback on the final day, doubles for both Colin Tizzard and Paul Nicholls saving blushes among the home contingent, but it was Elliott who once again landed the trainers title courtesy of another two winners, Farclas in the Triumph and Blow By Blow, who landed another win in the Martin Pipe for the yard.
Unlike 2017 when he’d tied for number of winners but won on the count-back of number of runners-up, this time Elliott was out on his own, winning by one. Elliott had also equalled Mullins record for the number of winners trained at a single Festival and Mullins and Elliott had between them won more than half of the races at the meeting.
In the space of 13 Cheltenham Festivals Gordon Elliott had matured from the eager, ambitious and fresh-faced young man who brought a single 100/1 shot to the meeting in 2006 to the record-breaking, dominant force he is today, leading trainer at the meeting for the past two seasons.
Where he goes next is anyone’s guess. Repeating 8 winners again would be a remarkable feat while beating that total seems a very tough ask.
Willie Mullins still has a yard choc-full of expensive equine talent and with up-and-coming trainers like Dan Skelton, former Elliott righthand-man Olly Murphy, Fergal O’Brien and a host of others there’ll be no shortage of talented individuals to fend off in the years to come.
But you sense that Elliott is still a long way from realising all of his ambi- tions. The championship races at the meeting, barring that Cheltenham Gold Cup win of Don Cossack’s, still elude him (he has only had five runners in the four championship races combined, three of those in the Gold Cup) and he will also be eager to establish a period of dominance to better that enjoyed by the Pipes, Nicholls, Hendersons and Mullins yards in years gone by. Cheltenham, as mentioned earlier, is where jumps racing, by and large, measures its champions and, for Elliott, the measuring still isn’t finished with.
One thing is certain. As the tapes go up on the next chapter of Elliott’s Cheltenham Festival story in March and as he stands by that rail in his dark blue raincoat, there will be few in that great arena with the passion, drive, determination and sheer will to succeed of the young, self-made man.