Winning machine Elliott has Grand National in his sights
IT is only a short walk from the main yard at Gordon Elliott’s Cullentra House Stables to the back field but the dogs lying outside the tack room in the afternoon sun are unimpressed by the equine royalty that awaits us there and they decide it is not worth the effort. They raise their heads briefly and watch us disappear around the corner.
The four horses in the field do not look up from their grazing as we lean on the gate and stare at them but they are quite a sight, these kings and queens at their leisure.
Apple’s Jade and Shattered Love stand on one side of a rope and the mighty Samcro stands on the other. Beyond Samcro, the fourth horse, smaller and stockier, shows a first flicker of curiosity and walks slowly towards us.
There is a white patch, which looks a little like a heart, on his forehead. It seems apt. Because this is Tiger Roll who, next Saturday, will try to become the first horse to win the Grand National two years in succession since Red Rum did it in 1973 and 1974.
‘He’s got a massive engine,’ says Elliott. ‘He always wants to win. He’s got a great heart. He’s the horse of a lifetime.’
The office is a monument to obsession and to success. Trophies from Cheltenham and memorabilia from Aintree and Leopardstown crowd the shelves and line the walls. A couple of picture frames sit on the desk but there is nothing in them. No pictures of a partner. No images of dad with his kids. None of the gestures to family that successful men often make in their place of work.
‘I’m single,’ says Elliott, 41. ‘No kids that I know about. I work hard. I’d say I’ve had a few long-term girlfriends but most of the break-ups have been my fault because I’m too selfish. Horses are 24/7. It’s not easy for someone. I’m not ready to settle down. I hope it happens to me someday but at the moment I just don’t see it. Racing’s my life.
‘There’s only one thing I want to be: that’s champion trainer. I don’t
really care about anything else. Holidays don’t interest me. I look at football but it doesn’t bother me. I don’t support anyone. I don’t play golf. I haven’t got time. That’s the way I am. I like being at home. I like what I do. It’s good. I like winning.’
If the narrative around the Grand National next Saturday will fix on Tiger Roll’s tilt at history, it will also revolve around the remarkable prominence of Elliott in the race and the rise and rise of a trainer whose hunger to catch and overtake his great rival Willie Mullins in the pecking order of Irish racing has become all-consuming.
If Mullins is a patrician presence in Irish racing, Elliott is the outsider, the son of a panel-beater and a housewife, a man whose ambition has driven him on and whose 78-acre empire here amid the lush countryside of County Meath continues to grow.
As he sits at his desk, Elliott, a former jockey with a decent record in point-to-points, runs his finger down the list of provisional entries for the big race at Aintree and estimates he will have anything from 10 to 12 runners in the National when the line-up is finalised on Thursday. Martin Pipe, Elliott’s idol and former employer, holds the current record with 10.
‘I’d love to run 11,’ says Elliott. ‘I worked for Martin Pipe and he taught me a lot of what I know. I’d like to run one more than him if I could. Would it mean something? It would mean something to win the race again but it would be nice to beat him at something too. He’s done most things, so it would nice to beat him at one thing.’
There is something refreshing about the openness and voracity of Elliott’s ambition. He does not hide behind false modesty or disingenuous self-deprecation. He is not boastful and he is the very opposite of brash, but he has worked so hard to rise to where he is now that he feels no need to apologise for his success.
He listens politely to the suggestion
that one man training a quarter of the field in a race as big as the Grand National is unhealthy for the sport and swats it away. He listens to the idea he is dependent on the patronage of the Gigginstown House Stud, the racing operation run by Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary and the owners of Tiger Roll, and dismisses it. ‘I understand it when people say I have too many runners in the National,’ Elliott says. ‘I get it day in and day out. But I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I didn’t get left anything. I bought this place six years ago. I built everything myself.
‘My background does drive me. I have a mortgage to pay and wages to pay every day of the week. I took a chance when I bought this place. I hadn’t got the price of a deposit never mind buying the place. We have kept driving on and driving on and driving on. We never stop. The success hasn’t changed my hunger.’
The National has a special place in Elliott’s career history. When he was just 29 and had not yet trained a single winner in Ireland, he won Britain’s most famous race in 2007 with Silver Birch. ‘People didn’t know who I was at the time,’ he says, ‘but they definitely knew who I was after it.’
He targeted races at courses in northern England and Scotland because they were races he thought his horses could win. He was a regular visitor to Perth, Ayr and Musselburgh. Always, the advice of his mentor, Pipe, rang in his ears. ‘Keep your horses in the worst company,’ the exalted trainer had told him, ‘and keep yourself in the best company.’
Elliott still recites that mantra now. ‘In other words,’ he says, ‘make sure your horse is running well and winning and make sure you are hanging around the right people. We all want to be there on the big day and have runners on the big day but there is no point going to Wimbledon and trying to play on Centre Court when you should be playing in your local park. You go where you can win. That’s what I was taught.’
Now he has trained well over 1,000 winners. He has won two Grand Nationals and the 2016 Cheltenham Gold Cup with Don Cossack. Through it all, Elliott has remained down-to-earth, likeable and undiluted in his obsession. He admits only to one diversionary weakness: between 1.30pm and 2pm every day, he watches the Australian soap opera, Home and Away. ‘It’s become a bit of a joke now,’ he says with a first hint of sheepishness. ‘Maybe it’s embarrassing. People normally don’t ring me when Home
and Away is on. It’s a switch off for me.’
Elliott will travel from Meath to Aintree on Wednesday, confident that Tiger Roll is in the form of his life and that even though he will be carrying six pounds more in the National than he was 12 months ago, he still has a good chance of repeating last year’s hair-breadth triumph and writing his name in the record books alongside Red Rum.
‘I’m 41 and I’ve trained a lot of winners for my age,’ he says. ‘But there’s only one thing I want to be and that’s champion trainer. I’m hoping I’m going to be in the game for the next 25 or 30 years and hopefully it’ll happen at some stage.
‘I’ve done nearly all I can do in terms of building here at Cullentra House. I have been here for six years. I still feel like we’re on an upward curve. I love it. I love racing. I love winners. I don’t care where it is. If it’s Perth or Leopardstown or Tramore or Aintree. I just love training winners. I love horses. I love racing.’