‘I was 100% wrong…there’s not a night I don’t think about it’: Top trainer Gordon Elliott shares his profound regret after he was branded a ‘monster’ when a shocking picture emerged of him astride a dead horse
- Gordon Elliott trained Grand National-winning horses in 2007, 2018 and 2019
- He was branded a ‘monster’ when a picture emerged of him astride a dead horse
- The picture, taken in 2019, shows him on his phone while making a V-sign
- Preparing for Cheltenham Festival, he tells of the ‘sinister’ plot to discredit him
- He also talks of his mental turmoil and his profound regret about the picture
Three-time Grand National-winning trainer Gordon Elliott knows full well he’s been blessed with the luck of the Irish. It’s a word that crops up time and again during our interview.
He’s lucky, he says, that he ‘took a few chances in life and built a dream’.
He’s also lucky ‘I just ended up getting winners. One went to ten, ten went to 20 and 20 went to 100.’ To date he has trained more than 1,900.
He’s ‘lucky his girlfriend of three years, racing reporter Kate Harrington, ‘understands the game, because sometimes you’re a bit selfish. When you’re training horses it’s 24/7.’
And he’s ‘really lucky to have a close bunch of friends I trust’.
‘I heard someone wise saying one day, “If you can count on two hands your really good friends, you’ve too many.” I thought it was a good saying. If you’ve got three or four proper friends — maybe five — you’re lucky. My really good friends held me together last year when everything was bleak.’
Last year, this ‘instinctive genius of a man’ — the view of devoted staff at his yard in County Meath — came close to losing everything when a shocking photograph, taken in 2019, emerged of him sitting on a horse that had collapsed and died on his gallops.
In the picture, a seemingly grinning Elliott, 44, is holding his mobile phone to his ear with one hand and apparently making a V-sign with the other.
When he first saw it, he says ‘my heart nearly fell out of my trousers’.
The shocking photograph, taken in 2019, which emerged of Gordon Elliott sitting on a horse that had collapsed and died on his gallops
As the image went viral and was viewed by millions around the world, a storm of understandable outrage rained down upon him.
Elliott is one of the sport’s most successful trainers and his name had been known far beyond the racing fraternity — ever since his tough gelding Tiger Roll, owned by Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, triumphed in 2018 and 2019 in the Grand National. (Gordon also won in 2007 with Silver Birch.)
Suddenly, he was accused of being a ‘monster’ and the image held up as proof that the racing industry had a ‘horrific dark side’.
The rage felt by those working in the sport and its authorities at the grotesque image — and what appeared to be Elliott’s callous disregard for the dead animal — was unbounded.
How could this likeable fellow who had come from, as he puts it, ‘nothing’ — the eldest of five children, his father a panel-beater and his mother a cleaner — to reach the loftiest heights in the sport of kings, have brought it so low?
The repercussions were immediate, wide-ranging and, in the view of many, well-deserved. Yes, he put his hand up and expressed his ‘profound’ regret but he couldn’t defend the indefensible.
Betfair dropped him as an ambassador. Owners removed ‘some of the best horses in the world’ from his yard. He was vilified by animal-rights activists, many of whom called for him to be banned for life. Even politicians took to Twitter to decry his actions.
Elliott has trained three Grand National-winning horses – in 2007, 2018 and 2019 – but last year he came close to losing it all
The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) gave him a 12-month suspension, allowing him to return to training after six months.
Gordon was beside himself and friends had real concern about his mental state and what he might do.
‘I went from having everything — all these horses, all these wonderful owners — to within inches of losing the lot,’ he says.
‘At that stage, if I’d gone down to 20 or 30 horses, I was preparing myself for it. You know that feeling in your stomach — a big lump, like a knot tightening? I had that for months.’
Just a few weeks earlier he’d had more favourites entered in the 2021 Cheltenham Festival than any trainer in Ireland or England, and was widely expected to win the Festival’s coveted Leading Trainer Award for a third time.
The surfacing of the 2019 photograph put paid to that. But was the timing purely coincidental?
Police investigated and IHRB judge Mr Justice Raymond Groarke noted ‘a sinister aspect’ to the case.
He said the committee was satisfied the publication of the photo was ‘part of a concerted attack on Mr Elliott’ whose horses ‘receive unrivalled care, attention and affection’.
‘We’d had a rough couple of weeks,’ Gordon concedes, speaking for the first time about the campaign he says was being waged against him.
‘A week before [the photograph was published], two ambulances arrived at my house at 2am or 3am saying someone had had a heart attack here. The Garda [police] came to investigate.
‘I also had an Owners’ Room outside where visiting owners could have a drink if they wanted.
‘When we were in lockdown, videos were going around — the same video went round four times — saying we were having weekly parties in a makeshift bar. The Owners’ Room is still out there but I had to shut it down because these things kept circulating.
‘There were two or three incidents. It wasn’t nice. I can’t tell you why or where it came from but it was happening. Then the photo came out and my whole world changed.’
He declines to be drawn further on this aspect of the scandal.
After the picture of Elliott emerged, Betfair dropped him as an ambassador. Owners removed ‘some of the best horses in the world’ from his yard. He was vilified by animal-rights activists, many of whom called for him to be banned for life. Even politicians took to Twitter to decry his actions
Gordon was at Fairyhouse Racecourse in County Meath when a friend rang to say he had been sent the image on social media.
‘I didn’t even realise there was a photograph until I saw it that day.
‘I knew instantly that it wasn’t good. I remember phoning a friend who said, “Just relax. It will be OK.” I said, “It won’t.”
‘I knew straight away it shouldn’t have happened — I shouldn’t have let it happen.’
‘I’m not making excuses. I was 100 per cent wrong. That poor horse . . . had obviously passed away. My phone rang and I sat on him. I probably didn’t even realise, to be honest. [When I heard a shout from one of my team], I did “that”.’ He half raises two fingers in the air.
‘I’d be lying if I could tell you why. I was probably wanting [the team member] to wait until I was finished on the phone.’
‘I don’t even remember the photograph being taken, but I shouldn’t have put myself in that position. I shouldn’t have taken the phone call until the horse was looked after first. But I did — and have to live with it.’
Michael O’Leary, the owner of the dead horse, a seven-year-old gelding called Morgan, has remained a staunch supporter of Elliott.
‘I’d never be shameful to a horse,’ the trainer tells me.
‘I didn’t know horses until I was 11 or 12 but, as soon as I began working with them at a stable just down behind my home — watering them and haying them — I got the bug. I loved them.
‘People who don’t know what horses are like think they’re big fierce animals but they’re really kind when you get to know them and get inside their head. I love every horse here — you’ve seen it for yourself.’
‘Here’ is Cullentra House, his yard some 40 miles from Dublin, where I visited in the week before his largest ever team of 55 horses, including Tiger Roll, are shipped to the Cheltenham Festival which starts tomorrow.
It will be an emotional roller coaster for Gordon, not least because Tiger Roll — now 12 years old and known to punters as ‘The People’s Horse’ — will be retired, whether he wins or loses his attempt at a record-equalling sixth Festival success when he runs in the Cross Country Chase.
It certainly put a smile on my face to feed hay to Gordon’s ‘horse of a lifetime’ as I listen to the easy banter of staff — he employs about 70 — who diligently look after 200 animals.
Elliott says he didn’t sleep for weeks when he thought he might lose the lot last year after the picture went viral
Last year, they gathered in this immaculate yard as Gordon prepared to face the regulatory board, fearing a permanent ban.
‘It was a year ago yesterday I was going off to the hearing,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know whether I was going to lose everything. I met all the staff at 7.45am and said, “Stick by me and we’ll try to get through this.”
‘Seeing all of them with tears in their eyes as I was heading off . . .’ He starts to well up.
After the turmoil of the past year, the yard is expected to add to its roll call of wins this week: the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2016 and 32 other wins at the Festival along with those three Grand National triumphs and two at Royal Ascot.
Gordon, famously described by a friend as ‘an ordinary man but with nothing ordinary about him’, loves to win. ‘I wear my heart on my sleeve,’ he admits.
‘When I have a winner, I get emotional . . . People think racing has to be like royalty and la-di-dah. I’m a normal person.’
He began his career as an amateur jockey after leaving school at 15.
When he realised in his mid-20s that, even after 46 wins, he ‘wasn’t good enough to be top class’, he took out his trainer’s licence.
Within a year he had won the Grand National with Silver Birch — a ‘cast-off’ from a top trainer — becoming at the age of 29, the youngest trainer to do so.
Some dismissed him as a ‘blow-in’, but he proved them wrong.
‘I just ended up getting winners and getting successful,’ he says.
‘People ask me sometimes what I do that’s different . . . I think it’s your eye and your instinct. I could see a horse gallop and say, “He’s had enough, take him home” or “He needs more.” I love it.
‘I walk round this yard every evening when everyone has gone home. Then I keep walking to the gallop.
‘You look down over the place and you appreciate everything you have.’
Gordon says he didn’t sleep for weeks when he thought he might lose the lot last year.
He had bought Cullentra House for £1 million in 2011 and spent every penny he earned over the next two years developing a state-of-the-art stables.
‘I was shaky,’ he says. ‘[My girlfriend] Kate was brilliant. She was here every day along with four or five friends . . .
‘If you ask some of my friends, they might say they were worried [I’d take my life]. I was low. They took me to see [a doctor] so I could talk about it.
‘But after a day or two I thought, “Right, you’ve got to give yourself a shake now and grab hold of yourself. Otherwise you’re going to lose everything.” ’
Jack Madden riding the Gordon Elliott trained Tiger Roll (front) on the gallops at Cheltenham Racecourse on March 13, 2022 in Cheltenham, England
He installed neighbouring trainer Denise Foster as a caretaker manager during his six-month suspension, and watched last year’s Festival on television.
‘When Tiger Roll won, I cried,’ he says. ‘Everyone knew I was training the horses until a few days before but you felt you had the plague watching it on television. You . . .’
He stops. Pulls himself up in his chair.
‘We lost some of the best horses in the world the week before Cheltenham [last year] when the owners took them away.
‘It was rough seeing the lads and lasses bawling. They [looked after] those horses like kids. We probably lost 20 in all, but 20 good ones.
‘I’ll never be over it, but I’ve got to get out and get going. Yesterday was sad because it was a year since I had my hearing but today it’s a year and a day — and it’s sunny.’
That said, he is up and out into the yard. Since regaining his licence in September, Gordon has had 118 winners in Ireland and six in Britain.
On Wednesday, if his ‘horse of a lifetime’ Tiger Roll wins his last ever race, it will be, as Gordon puts it, ‘awesome’.
The word at the yard is that Fil Dor (Triumph Hurdle) and Galvin (Gold Cup), as well as American Mike (Champion Bumper) and Ginto (declared for the two Novice Hurdles), are also worth a flutter.
Victory for all or any of them would taste sweet — but future successes will always be tempered by the events of last year and Gordon’s regret at his actions.
‘There’s not a night I don’t lie on the couch or in bed thinking about it,’ he says, as I take my leave.
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