‘Disgraceful’ Elliott’s six-month ban
Publication of 2019 picture ‘part of attack’ on Irish trainer Three-time National winner admits behaviour was ‘horrific’
Gordon Elliott, the Irish trainer, was last night banned for a year, with six months suspended, over the “unforgivable” photograph of him sitting on a dead horse.
The three-time Grand National winner showed “appalling bad taste” and a “complete absence of respect”, according to a damning verdict from the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board. After a week in which the image sparked international outrage, the IHRB committee hinted at an organised attempt to derail Elliott’s career. “There is also a sinister aspect to this case,” it said of the sudden appearance of the 2019 image on social media. “The committee are satisfied that the publication of this photograph is part of a concerted attack on Mr Elliott, the full circumstances of which are unknown.”
He was found to have brought the sport into disrepute, acting in a manner “prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct and good reputation” of the sport”. The IHRB described the photograph as showing “a complete absence of respect for the horse at a time when he still remains in charge”. The ban – the last six months of which are suspended – will begin on Tuesday, a week before the start of the Cheltenham Festival. He must also pay €15,000 (£12,950) in costs.
His horses could still run at the Festival if someone takes over the licence at Cullentra House. The British Horseracing Authority confirmed last night “if horses are transferred directly to other licensed trainers prior to March 9 – when the suspension is due to commence – they will be able to run.” Last night it appeared that local trainer Denise
“Sneezy” Foster was being lined up to take over the licence.
Elliott, 43, admitted his conduct had been “disgraceful”, “horrific” and “wholly inappropriate and distasteful”. He said in a statement: “I accept my situation and my sanction and am satisfied with my engagement with the IHRB. It is not an easy job to sit on the panel but I was dealt with fairly. I am in this situation by my own action and I am not going to dodge away from this. With my position in the sport, I have great privileges and great responsibility. I did not live up to that responsibility.
“I am no longer the teenage boy who first rode a horse at Tony Martin’s 30 years ago. I am paying a heavy price for my error but I have no complaints. I will serve my time and then build back better.”
A statement from the IHRB referrals committee confirmed the photograph “has existed since 2019”. Among the matters considered in the ruling was the fact “outrage has been expressed by the racing and non-racing public that a horse, albeit deceased, could be treated in this manner”. The IHRB said Elliott had “expressed what we believe to be a genuine remorse”, adding it believed he “genuinely accepts that he was extraordinarily foolish to participate in the way he did”.
Less than a week after a photograph of Gordon Elliott sitting astride a dead horse started appearing on social media, the trainer found himself at the foot of a serpent in the snakes and ladders of life after his licence was suspended for a year, with six months suspended.
The rise and rise of Gordon Elliott, a panel beater’s son who started out in racing before he had left school, to become a three-time Grand National-winning trainer, is one of the great stories to have emerged from racing in the past 15 years. A bit like his great mentor and former employer, Martin Pipe, it is comforting to know that you do not have to be an ex-army officer, son of the landed gentry or fourth generation of a training family – or, all three – to get to the top.
Indeed, in some ways it has proved that starting with a blank canvas and few preconceived ideas about the job can be turned to an advantage if you have the right sort of inquiring mind and work ethic.
As a trainer, Elliott, 43, certainly hit the road running when he won the 2007 Grand National with Silver Birch, a cast-off from no less a trainer than Paul Nicholls.
At that stage, he had not even had a winner in Ireland and, cementing his place in the race’s long and distinguished history, he became, at 29, the youngest trainer to win it.
The National is no guarantee of future success for either the trainers or jockeys who win it but, for Elliott, it was a portent of what was to come, and he soon outgrew Capranny Stables in Trim, where he had started in 2006.
Within five years he had found a dilapidated 78-acre farm and begun to build Cullentra House. The first man he installed was an accountant and he has kept reinvesting to the point where it is now home to more than 200 thoroughbreds and the finest training establishment in Ireland with, perhaps, the exception of Ballydoyle.
In Ireland, he has risen to be the only serious competition to Willie Mullins. He has yet to be champion, but in the 2016-17 season he led Mullins to the last day of the season.
It is, however, at Cheltenham where he has trumped his great nemesis. In 2017 and 2018, he was leading trainer with six and eight winners (a record) respectively and he bagged a Gold Cup, with Don Cossack in 2016, three years before Mullins got that particular monkey off his back with Al Boum Photo.
Whatever Envoi Allen, the unbeaten horse who left his yard this week as a result of the photograph, goes on to do, it is unlikely that Elliott, however long he trains, will have a horse like Tiger Roll again; a four-time winner at the Cheltenham Festival and the first horse to win more than one Grand National since Red Rum in the 1970s.
Tiger Roll is owned by Michael O’leary’s Gigginstown Stud, Elliott’s biggest owner by some margin. When O’leary fell out with Mullins in the summer of 2016, he sent the 40 horses he had there to Elliott and the vast majority of the Gigginstown eggs are now in the Cullentra basket.
After the publication of The Jumping Game: How trainers work and what makes them tick, three-time Gold Cup-winning trainer Henrietta Knight was asked which of all the trainers she had interviewed for her book she would have a horse in training with. She replied Elliott.
“He’s an outstanding trainer,” said Knight, a stickler for treating horses well, yesterday. “His horses are always in good condition, he studies them individually and places them [in the right races] very well.
“Cullentra is like a five-star hotel for horses, there’s always a good atmosphere, no shortcuts. He’s hands on and his enthusiasm is catching. He loves his horses, but there is a bit of a wild side to him. He’s very social, loves a party and that’s maybe why he’s so good because there’s something about him. He’s a good man, I like his company.”
So, can Elliott come back from this setback? It took him 15 years to build his reputation, less than 15 seconds of madness to undo it.
“Tiger Woods came back,” Knight said. “Gordon will definitely come back, but he will be tarnished and it will be sad if this incident is all he is ever remembered for.”
Of course, the story behind the story is who saved this photograph for a couple of years until putting it on social media, when it was calculated to do the most damage, a fortnight before the Festival? The harm to the racing industry, great that it has been, may just be collateral damage in a personal vendetta and, it seems, unlike his many winners, this is one in which the trainer has come off a poor second.
‘Cullentra is like a five-star hotel for horses. He loves his horses, but there is a wild side to him’