EVERY OF BEATING MULLINS DAY I DREAM
Gordon Elliott reveals his obsession with dethroning the greatest trainer of all time
THE picture on the cover of the glossy, hardback book devoted to every one of Gordon Elliott’s winners during the 2016-17 jumps season — 193 in Ireland and 30 in Britain — has not been chosen by accident.
A beaming Elliott is standing on the Cheltenham Festival winner’s podium after Champagne Classic’s victory in the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle with his arm around one of the biggest influences in his career.
‘Martin Pipe is my idol in life. What he did for the game, he’d be my hero,’ says Elliott. ‘His statistics brought things to a different level.
‘I went over to Martin’s for a season when I was 18 or 19. I am still good friends with him. Starting off he was my role model.’
With 4,183 winners (34 of them at the Cheltenham Festival) and 15 British jump trainers’ titles, Pipe is not a bad role model to have.
Like Pipe, whose father Dave was a bookmaker, 40-year- old Elliott had no inside strings to pull to get into training. Elliott’s father Pat is a panel-beater and mother Jane a housewife.
He also adopted his hero’s philosophy that winners are the only thing that matters. It’s why the six Elliott enjoyed at last year’s Festival meant more than being named the meeting’s top trainer.
‘It was good being top trainer at Cheltenham but it didn’t change my life,’ Elliott says. ‘You get presented with a trophy after the second last race on the Friday and there are about 20 people watching.
‘ If you are leading trainer, brilliant, it means you are winning races, but it is not the be-all and end-all. It is only this week and next week people start to talk about it when Cheltenham comes around again,
‘If you ask me do I want to be leading trainer in Cheltenham or leading trainer in Ireland, there is only one place that matters.’
Last season Elliott almost had that first Irish title he craved.
On the Thursday of the seasonending Punchestown Festival in April, he was nearly €130,000 (£115,000) ahead of Willie Mullins. By the Saturday evening, when the curtain fell, the lead had turned into a €200,000 deficit.
‘It was heartbreaking,’ Elliott says. ‘Last year, being champion was the be-all and end-all to me.
‘I know how privileged I am to be in the same sentence as Willie Mullins. I am probably lucky I was not born in the same year as him because he is undoubtedly the best jumps trainer there has ever been. I would love to beat him some day. He sets the standard.
‘ People ask, “Do you think about beating him every day?” Of course you do. You think about it every night you go to bed. If you didn’t you shouldn’t be doing it.
‘Before Willie came along 70 winners would have been enough to be champion trainer. Between me and Willie now we will probably train 400 winners a season.
‘If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said it will take me 10 years to beat Willie. But we are getting closer every year.’
One glance around Elliott’s Cullentra House stable in County Meath tells you why he has grounds for optimism.
The once- derelict dairy farm continues to gain impressive facilities for a string of almost 200 horses, the majority of which run in the Gigginstown Stud colours of Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary.
Ominously for British trainers, Elliott believes Ireland could have an even better Festival than last year, when the country landed 19 of the 28 races.
Elliott is responsible for seven favourites. His own Festival squad will include three of his 2017 winners: Apple’s Jade (David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle), Cause of Causes (Cross Country Chase) and Tiger Roll, who won the National Hunt Chase but is also heading to Wednesday’s Cross Country Chase.
There will also be unbeaten odds- on favourite Samcro — which has been labelled Ireland’s new super horse — in Wednesday’s Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle.
The trainer said: ‘Obviously, Samcro is a very good horse but I am not going to talk him up too much. If he gets there in one piece and has a clear round, he is the one they have to beat.’
But the win that would probably provide most satisfaction would be if Cause of Causes, winner of the 2015 National Hunt Chase, 2016 Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Handicap Chase and 2017 Cross Country Chase, made it four Festival victories by repeating his success of last year.
Elliott says: ‘He is in good order, he won’t be far away. When the sun comes out, he gets good. He is some horse. We have trained him especially for Cheltenham.’