Most elite trainers project a public persona, maybe even cultivate it. Dermot Weld is noted for a certain patrician loftiness, Aidan O'Brien for veering more towards Daniel O'Donnell territory. Gordon Elliott is the latest addition to Ireland's training oligarchy but remains something of an unknown. That's changing though, and fast.
If there’s one thing that distinguishes the meteoric career of this 37-year-old from Meath it is a speed – both of achievement and ambition – seemingly at odds with the portly figure happily released from the rigours of maintaining a comparatively underwhelming former career as a jockey.
It’s less than 10 years since Elliott saddled his first runner.
He famously won the 2007 Grand National with Silver Birch before even having a winner in Ireland. But it is the remorselessly upward climb up the trainer's championship table since then which has the most powerful owners in the game beating a path to his Longwood stables.
Willie Mullins, with his steely ambition framed within an easy charm, is still the undisputed king of Irish National Hunt racing but Elliott has emerged as the young pretender and is closing the gap – and fast.
Just five years ago, the Summerhill native finished 13th in the trainers’ championship judged on prizemoney.
In 2011 Elliott had progressed to fourth: by 2013 he was second but almost €3 million behind Mullins. Runner-up again in the last two years, significantly so far this season he trails his legendary rival by less than €200,000.
Competitive environment
With the lucrative Christmas action just a few weeks away, Mullins may pull away again but no one’s taking it for granted anymore, which appears to be regarded as no sort of achievement at all by the mechanic’s son who has pushed his way to the summit of a crazily competitive environment through talent, persistence and sheer drive.
“I would like to beat Willie some day. It could take 10 years. He’s an amazing man, a gentleman, and someone I admire. He has set the bar. But if I say I’m happy to be second for the next 10 years then owners shouldn’t be paying me to train their horses,” he says.
He’s equally blunt about more immediate ambitions.
He is 27 winners shy of a first century in Ireland this season. He is already just a handful short of a century between Ireland and Britain. He wants the 100 before Christmas. It will be no surprise if he manages it before next week.
Equally unsurprisingly the usual accoutrements of racing success have come his way: the bookmaker sponsor, the ubiquitous corporate blog, and yesterday the launch of Leopardstown’s’s Christmas festival, the carrot of being able to tramp all over Elliott’s Cullentra House Stables dangled in front of a media platoon in return for plugging the upcoming holiday fixtures expected to attract 59,000 fans.
If it’s another sign of his status as Mullins’s competition, it’s one Elliott could probably survive happily without. Mullins can be a smooth public operator. His rival, you suspect, is still a little uncomfortable with the bullshit game, a little more unsure, for now.
Those who know Elliott speak of a down-to-earth individual and that peeks through between volleys of cliché about luck which can then veer noticeably the other way toward blunt declarations about the cost of keeping the near-140 box operation ticking over. But it’s those boxes which speak volumes.
It is only four years since these 78 acres were just green grass. Now the second-most powerful jumping string in the country call it home, galloping over extensive woodchip gallops and sand gallops carefully moulded out of south Meath, before returning to barns with concrete blocks still new enough to make paint unnecessary.
Economic times
Elliott has built it from scratch, and is continually reinvesting, even in darker economic times through which he has been continually supported by high-powered owners such as
Ryanair
boss Michael O’Leary.
Success though hasn’t blunted the trainer’s perspective. It is his ability to saddle winners that ensures such patronage.
“I’m very grateful to get these horses but they’re getting results,” he says.
“And you know Michael; if you’re not getting results, it’s bye-bye.”
Everything is about winners – “If I don’t have a winner this weekend, there’ll be none of you press lads here next week!”
The most important Christmas runner of all will be Don Cossack, the top-rated chaser in these islands, who will tackle Kempton's King George VI Chase. As the imposing Gigginstown-owned star led 19 others around the gallop yesterday, the circled media might not have been there at all such was the trainer's focus on him, even ignoring the audience to remind one unfortunate on another ornery mount to "wake up!"
One can’t imagine some of his more urbane contemporaries doing the same in the circumstances although Elliott says: “I’m highly strung and I give a roar. But then it’s forgotten 30 seconds later. You know where you stand with me.”
A King George victory would be another major step on a resolutely upward curve for someone who was just another horse-mad teenager with no racing background when starting out.
It is a remarkable story of drive and ambition which shows no signs of coming to an end. Elliott may have to get used to telling it. The public can look forward to hearing it for some time to come.
