a rush to condemn an honest man.

​I will begin by wishing Gordon Elliott a Happy Birthday. It won’t be happy or anything like it, of course. His life has descended into a maelstrom of misery. Most of it self-induced.
Let’s be clear about something, I do not wish to be seen to be defending Gordon Elliott and I very much doubt if he would want anyone to act as defending barrister on his behalf. He has admitted his guilt and awaits his punishment. His honesty reflects well on him. Honest men should be sympathetically listened to.
He didn’t kill a man, you know. He didn’t cause the death of the horse Morgan on his gallops in 2019. He isn’t accused of mistreatment or cruelty or negligence. The horse had suffered a fatal heart attack. He is not accused of doping a horse or instructing a jockey to stop one of his horses. Indefensibly he sat on the carcass of a dead horse while he waited for the knacker-wagon to arrive.
I fully sign up to the care and respect for horses from birth to the grave. I was quietly championing such a thing for many years before it became the aspiration of the B.H.A. But once dead it is almost impossible to bring any dignity to the poor unfortunate horse. To remove this horse from Gordon’s gallops his legs would be tied together and the carcass would either be hoisted onto the knacker-wagon like spoil from a building site or he would be dragged unceremoniously onto the knacker-wagon. At the abattoir the carcass would be cut-up and the meat fed, no doubt, to the local foxhounds. A long while ago I worked in a yard when a mare died of tetanus, a fate horrific to observe, may I inform you. She was stabled where it was impossible to get a knacker-wagon anywhere close and to remove the body the local huntsman had to cut her up in her stable. Believe me, there is no dignity in death for a horse.
Gordon Elliott will not lose his license because he sat on a dead horse or because some low-life posted the photograph documenting the event on social media. He will lose his livelihood because he has brought horse racing into disrepute and he will be judged by a regulatory body that accepted money from government to install security cameras in every Irish racecourse stables and then choose to spend it elsewhere. ‘There is something rotten in the State of Denmark’ comes to mind.
Amazingly, it is the O’Leary brothers who are coming out of this sad affair with bucket-loads of propriety. They are backing Elliott, while, quite rightly, condemning what he did. Yet with the B.H.A., reprehensibly in my opinion, banning Elliott’s horses from running in Great Britain, his owners with leading hopes for the Festival in a fortnight will be forced to hastily find new trainers, lessening greatly their chances of achieving glory. More innocent victims of an act of thoughtlessness photographed back in 2019.
I will repeat. Elliott did not kill anyone. He has not committed any act of violence or neglect against any of the horses in his charge. A jockey might get a ten-day ban for breaching whip rules, with a bit longer if he or she leaves a wheal mark. Elliott has not laid a finger on a horse in comparison. Why is it edifying for the public to witness a horse being whipped in a race and yet a photograph of Elliott sitting on a dead horse somehow creates a storm of protest that will only be sated with his destruction, seemingly. In the 1st World War soldiers would take shelter behind wounded and dead horses. Anyone who has worked with horses will have witnessed, at one time or another, scenes far worse than anything Elliott has pleaded guilty to. We need to bring some perspective to all of this otherwise worms will be escaping from cans here, there and everywhere.
If I can offer Elliott any sort of helpful advice it would be this: appoint someone qualified to be a trainer as your replacement till the end of the season to ensure continuity, so as to allow your owners to keep their horses at Cullentra, if only in the short-term. Your owners will be disadvantaged if they have to remove their horses at short notice. Your staff, too, deserve not to be parted from horses they have cared-for over many seasons. No one else should suffer because of your grievous error of judgement.
No length of suspension from the sport metered out by the I.H.R.B. will equal the pain of remorse that Elliott must now be trying to live with. His reputation will never recover; the shameful photograph will remain in the archives, an accusation easily levied against him until the day he dies. He fully deserves whatever punishment is coming his way but once he has served his time, he will deserve our forgiveness. If he is punished as if he is some kind of monster it will be a crime that will far outstrip the thoughtless act of sitting on a dead horse.