On Saturday last, a half hour’s drive from his yard that grew from nothing to be one of the most impressive of its type in the world, Gordon Elliott was at Fairyhouse, the highest-profile of the four racecourses of his native county of Meath.

For the 43-year-old, it was another normal day. He had a hot favourite, Teahupoo, who duly landed the odds. His hopes of winning the second graded race on the card were dashed as Petit Mouchoir came in second. Not to worry.

Petit Mouchoir was owned for most of his life by Elliott’s main backer, Michael O’Leary, but now runs in the silks of Noel Moran, the multimillionaire Meath-based entrepreneur, and his wife Valerie. He chased home the favourite, Jason The Militant, trained by Elliott’s impressive rival, Henry de Bromhead. Over the coming days, all would have roles in one of the most astonishing and damaging stories to hit the sport in its modern history, but one faced ruin: Gordon Elliott.

The sentence handed out by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Body on Friday night was severe but not ruinous for Elliott. It may allow him the time to reflect on the consequences of this event and see if they fit in with any other patterns of behaviour. He will need the loyalty of those who helped build his yard but, unless there are further revelations, that is likely.

Last Saturday all that was to come was yet to reveal itself to Elliott, but onlookers in the vast space of Fairyhouse’s behind-closed-doors meet would soon note something was not right. As the afternoon developed, he was seen in a state of near-constant agitation, often venting his anger to somebody on the other end of a mobile phone.

It was fitting that Elliott would learn of the catastrophe about to befall him on a smartphone, as would nearly everyone else. His world was about to fall apart. The internet-obsessed masses, nearly a year deep into lockdown, were ready for a war of hysteria born out of morality from mortality.

Some felt, as the story unfolded, that there was more at play. The IHRB statement on Friday referenced this. “In the view of the Committee there is also a sinister aspect to this case. The Committee are satisfied that the publication of this photograph is part of a concerted attack upon Mr Elliott, the full circumstances of which are unknown. This has been canvassed not for the purpose of defence or absolution but in order to explain the publication at this time of a photograph which has existed since 2019.”

It would serve as no defence or absolution in the court of public opinion where this case had played out with potentially more damaging consequences than any from a regulatory body.

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The process which would end with that punishment moved into gear at 7.29 last Saturday evening. The IHRB – which tends to move at a glacial pace, such that it only started posting regularly on Twitter in 2019 – stated that it was aware of the Elliott image circulating. Elliott would not comment until later that evening telling his Twitter followers, some 83,000 of them, at 11.17pm, that he was “aware of a photo in circulation on social media” and that he would be “cooperating fully” with the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Body. Those who had presumed that the photograph was a fake now began to understand that it was not.

Sunday entailed a curious vacuum of clarity, in addition to rampant speculation, with Racing TV inexplicably deciding not to mention the issue at all throughout its coverage of Naas races, which concluded with an Elliott-trained winner, but no reference whatever to what seemed to be the only thing people in racing were talking about. 

“I appreciate that an initial viewing of this photo suggests it is a callous and staged photo but nothing could be further from the truth”

At 3.30pm on Sunday, a spokesperson for the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) said: “We hope the Irish authorities will quickly confirm how this shocking picture originated.” In keeping with a trend for late-night statements that would have gone down well with the FAI in Abbotstown, Elliott came clean at 11.39pm, having at this stage disabled replies to his tweets. 

If the timing was questionable, the explanation for how he had ended up posing for a photograph on top of a dead horse whilst giving the peace sign was bordering on farce. Elliott had made a horrific blunder on his gallops two years ago but this was petrol as a fire extinguisher. Understandably lacking confidence about how best to deal with the issue, he had been very badly advised.

“I appreciate that an initial viewing of this photo suggests it is a callous and staged photo but nothing could be further from the truth. At what was a sad time, which it is when any horse under my care passes away, my initial reaction was to get the body removed from where it was positioned.

“I was standing over the horse waiting to help with the removal of the body, in the course of which, to my memory I received a call and, without thinking, I sat down to take it. Hearing a shout from one of my team, I gestured to wait until I was finished,” read his statement.

Elliott would enjoy four winners at Punchestown on Monday, after which the BHA said it was banning his runners in Britain, with the Cheltenham Festival just over two weeks away. His birthday on Tuesday would be one of the worst days of his life, in which he welled up in front of staff, imploring that he needed them more than ever.

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“If you love animals,” warned the news anchor, “it’s probably going to make you cry, or scream. The pictures are sick and frankly so disturbing that we decided that we just can’t show them.”

This was not a report on RTÉ or even the BBC, but CNN, which told viewers that “the racing industry in the UK is in a state of crisis this week after an image emerged of one of the sport’s top trainers, Gordon Elliott, sitting proudly and posing – on a dead horse. 

Photo: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

“Incredibly there are also images online this week of an amateur jockey, Rob James, posing on the back of another dead horse. It has brought into sharp focus the plight of the animals in what is known as the sport of kings. According to Animal Aid, a total of 186 horses died as a direct result of racing in 2019.”

Early on the morning of his 43rd birthday, Elliott was national news, but at least he could now share racing’s collective shame with James, who had ridden a Cheltenham Festival winner for him in 2020. Footage of an old video showing a young James mock-riding a dead animal had now emerged, suggesting that if somebody were out to get Elliott, somebody was also out to get racing. 

That morning I spoke on RTE Radio 1, BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle. Minister Of State for Sport, Jack Chambers, told Newstalk he would not be comfortable with Elliott having runners at Cheltenham. Jockey Davy Russell had been intended to appear on Today With Claire Byrne, but he pulled out quite late, instead appearing briefly on Prime Time that evening, when he was nervous and fortunate that presenter Louise Byrne treated him as if he were recently bereaved. 

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Whilst it may seem convenient to conflate the challenges facing the greyhound industry and horse racing, both involve racing animals for sport, are uniquely popular in Ireland but waning elsewhere and dependent on government support. 

Brian Purcell worked for the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB) from 2008 to 2011. “I would be a little bit worried at this stage because this happened already in another industry. When I did PR for the Irish Greyhound Board, we began to see some of the not-so-nice things happening where you get a Friday-evening phonecall, the dreaded Friday-evening phonecall from a Sunday newspaper, and you would say ‘Oh no, something’s wrong here’.

“Two Friday evenings in particular I remember. One was when they found some greyhounds that were dumped in a quarry. It got huge coverage at the time. There was no excuse for it whatsoever. People were caught, an example was made of them.

“Another Friday, I got a call: greyhounds were found in a ditch, somewhere in Leinster. The IGB was trying to grapple with it and get systems in place. That smell never went away. It took until ten years later, the RTE Prime Time Investigates programme, its piece on the industry, that the world fell out of it completely. 

“Then and only then the IGB belatedly moved into putting in staunch traceability and re-homing, they are pretty much there now. What they have done since is they worked very fast and it is brilliant. It is very late in the day. I understand former greyhounds who raced and lurchers are pretty much the most popular dogs people want as pets in Dublin now. But nobody really cares for that narrative.”

One greyhound insider said:  “I feel horse racing folk are going through what we’ve gone through every day since the RTÉ assassination.” Over in the US, once one of America’s favourite pastimes, greyhound racing is all but dead. Horse racing’s reputation over there has been ruined by doping and startling fatality numbers. Thursday’s card at Golden Gate Fields, a San Francisco track facing an uncertain future, was on hold after animal rights protesters ran on to the track before the first race and locked themselves together with interlocking pipes over their arms.

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The BHA went on something of a solo run last weekend, which grated with the IHRB, which was conscious that Elliott deserved a fair hearing, yet Cheltenham was looming. It took the IHRB well over two years to ban trainer Charles Byrnes over the Viking Hoard fiasco, the horse having been heavily sedated before a race at Tramore, whilst its ongoing investigation into the betting patterns surrounding a hugely controversial race at Dundalk is nearing a one-year anniversary.

As such, that Elliott’s hearing was as soon as Friday was anomalous, but the BHA was under pressure. Part of the charm of the Cheltenham Festival is the battle of Britain versus Ireland, yet the British-Irish divide of Cheltenham 2020 was more memorable for Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar disagreeing on it going ahead, while the chasm coming up to the 2021 Festival relates to animal welfare. 

Mick Fitzgerald, who welled up on Monday morning as he expressed his sadness on Sky Sports Racing, wrote a piece in the Examiner two days later. “In England,” the former jockey stressed, “we are under constant pressure in racing to justify ourselves. We have to be so careful. People in Ireland have more of an understanding of rural life but I know racing has enemies everywhere. People aren’t accustomed to seeing dead animals and there is a real emotional reaction to that.”

Two years ago, over at Cheltenham for the Festival, I turned on the news. On the morning of day one of British and Irish racing’s showpiece Festival, the BBC lead on Cheltenham’s attempts to cut down on equine fatalities, a bizarre editorial line on one of the few days in the calendar when nearly everyone seems to be having a bet.

After the National Hunt Chase that day, rider Declan Lavery (who finished third aboard JP McManus’ Jerrysback), was given a ten-day ban. Lavery had persevered on a tiring horse to obtain his best placing feasible, the latter aspiration part of the BHA’s own rules. Racing icon Tony McCoy slated the decision. The distance of the race was since changed, in keeping with alterations to the Grand National born out of welfare issues.

The British-Irish divide is evinced by the reaction of Elliott’s owners, the only one of which to jump ship, Cheveley Park Stud, is based in Britain. Among those to back him were Michael O’Leary and Philip Reynolds, son of former Taoiseach, the late Albert Reynolds.

According to Brian Purcell, it is imperative that Horse Racing Ireland goes on the rampage in terms of welfare henceforth. As part of this article, I asked for a reaction from John Osborne, who has been Horse Racing Ireland’s Director of Equine Welfare and Bloodstock since late 2019, but he referred back to CEO Brian Kavanagh, to whom I had sent an email previously.

Kavanagh said: “The images were appalling and have been rightly condemned throughout the sport. HRI unreservedly condemns them. I think people were bewildered that a leading trainer would be in such a position and the level of the reaction reflects the fact that this was such an abnormal thing to happen. 

“It won’t harm public support for racing if handled properly. It falls on all in the sport to illustrate and explain the respect and love for the horse which is central to everything we do. I think people are able to weigh up whether these are isolated incidents against all the positive care and welfare aspects of racing.”

Asked did he fear state support might be under threat, Kavanagh stressed: “No: they are two entirely separate matters – the funding is for the development of the industry and the impact it makes on jobs and the economy. That said, HRI is always happy to meet with the Joint Agricultural Committee to discuss our industry and their interest in the sector is greatly appreciated.”

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I’ve spoken to trainers, jockeys, those involved in breeding, sales, journalists, and so on this week. Hardly any Irish trainers have spoken to the press either way, whatever is to be made of such omerta, but Ted Walsh did, and his views were well-received. Racing has a scatter of problems at the moment and it did not need this.

One trainer pointed out that Elliott had risen to the top from nothing and was an easy target, whereas the Davy Stockbrokers scandal seemed to be getting far less attention than a man sitting on a dead animal. Has racing become an easy target?

Cheltenham 2020 was a PR nightmare for the sport, which is grossly unfair, considering hardly anyone mentions that Liverpool played Atletico Madrid before a packed Anfield in the middle of it. To be approaching the sport’s showcase festival with one of its biggest names having been photographed seemingly making a mockery of a horse who died while exercising is another level of horror altogether, and that is without considering the problems the sport has endured in the past 12 months.

Racegoers have been unable to attend, prize-money has reached shockingly low levels in Britain, such that trainers and owners are leaving a sport that is enormously reliant on Arab money; yet the towering figure of Khalid Abdullah, owner of Frankel, has passed away; and Sheikh Mohammed, by far its biggest benefactor, is now disgraced in Britain on account of allegations regarding his daughters. 

Racing in this country is hugely reliant on government support, yet Sinn Féin has reacted angrily this week. It has called into question the colossal state support long taken as a given. Football betting is now as popular or more popular than racing betting, yet racing is the sport that benefits from betting turnover. This is certain to change and rightly so.

Racing does not tend to make news headlines unless it entails something salacious. Sunday Independent sports editor John Greene says that the controversy “doesn’t change my view of Irish racing – but I have issues with the racing scene here, which has been reflected in some of our recent coverage”.

Those issues relate to the stench of drugs in Irish racing, with the paper’s Paul Kimmage and the Sunday Times’s, David Walsh, engaged in something of an arms race to expose the issue in recent months. Last week, the Guardian, needing to cut costs, let go its well-regarded racing journalist Chris Cook, son of former Labour MP Robin.

For Cook, the Elliott scandal has pushed racing towards a bad place.

“It’s been a distressing week; how bad this is going to be is hard to tell, as we are in the middle of it. I can remember when I started at the Guardian, the champion jockey was on trial at the Old Bailey for race fixing. That was months of really bad publicity. Around that time Panorama did a stinging expose on the sport too. 

“The sport moved on. But this feels like a really bad moment and the implications, media having changed, are being felt around the world. Racing in California is braced for blow-back from the story, the sport there still being under intense pressure over animal welfare standards. Insiders assume that animal rights organisations will use the images to provoke outrage.”

“I am an adult with obligations and a position in a sport I have loved since I first saw horses race.”

Derek McGrath, former long-time chief executive of the European Rugby Cup and more recently CEO at the Curragh, left the sport to set up a sports consultancy firm. “My struggle in racing was the balance between horse-racing as an industry and horse-racing as a sport. A lot of the time in situations like this its immediate reaction is to get concerned about the industry, the employment, the opportunities and commercial aspect and preserving that, as opposed to maybe thinking how is this to be perceived? 

“You can’t ignore the Covid factor in this. Everything is being blown up beyond relevance but if Covid has taught us anything in sport, it’s the value of public interest and support.”

On Friday morning at Naas racecourse, security was tight. Gates to get into the vast racecourse were locked; nobody who should not have been there was going to get in. Gordon Elliott had to face the outside world again, a world that has become a curiously hostile place for racing. Were Elliott to read The Sun, he could note its story that his “runner called Burn The Evidence raises eyebrows ahead of debut after trainer’s dead horse photo shame”.

Elliott may return after his six-month ban is served. He was contrite in his statement on Friday night but it also told of his story and why there were many in racing still loyal. “I am no longer the teenage boy who first rode a horse at Tony Martin’s 30 years ago. I am an adult with obligations and a position in a sport I have loved since I first saw horses race.”

“Horses are my life. I love them. No one comes into racing for money – it is a hard way to make a living. We are here because we love the horses. Anyone who has visited my stables at Cullentra will see the meticulous care with which we treat our horses. I was disrespectful to a dead horse, an animal that had been a loyal servant to me and was loved by my staff.

“I will carry the burden of my transgressions for the rest of my career. I will never again disrespect a horse living or dead and I will not tolerate it in others.”

Elliott has that opportunity to change, but with Cheltenham a little over a week away, the horse racing industry now knows that any further revelations about the sport could damage a lot more than the reputation of a single trainer.