​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.

​Let me be clear; I have not seen the photograph of Gordon Elliott sitting on or standing astride a fallen horse, a horse that might or might not have died on his gallops. I have not heard Elliott’s side of the story and because of the grave consequences to the image of the sport I hope there is an explanation that will clear his name and restore his reputation.
At the moment, the guiding hand here should be that Gordon Elliott is innocent until proven guilty and until his case is heard I will presume him innocent. I hope others will too.
Anyone with experience of working with horses will be aware that if there is a need to restrain a horse that has fallen for whatever reason from getting up, sitting astride it, especially someone with a bit of weight about them, is a good stopgap method. I am assuming, of course, that this horse was not dead but still alive, no doubt badly injured and Elliott was acting in an effort to save it from further injury or distress. When a horse is cast in its box (its legs up the sides of the stable with insufficient room to right itself), for instance, sitting on its neck will hopefully give someone enough time to find a lunge-rope so that two people can gentle turn the horse over so that it can get up. So, sitting on a prone horse is not necessarily a welfare issue.
Then there is the issue of the low-life that posted this, what I again assume is, an historic photograph on social media. One must suspect, if the incident took place at Cullentra House, that one of Elliott’s employees or friends took the photograph and if this person posted it then there must be the intent to get Elliott into severe trouble. If the photograph was stolen from the owner of it, then real villainy is afoot.
How ever the cards fall for Elliott, whatever punishment is handed out by the Irish racing authorities, his reputation will be irreversibly dented. Already, reprehensibly in my opinion, Betfair has ended its association with him. As I have already said, a man is innocent until proven guilty and unless Elliott has admitted his guilt to Betfair, I would suggest he is better off without their sponsorship. I have never been easy with these associations between bookmakers and trainers and think they should be closely looked at. And with Cheltenham coming up the top owners he is privileged to train for will be placed in a difficult situation. It is too close to the Festival to be moving their horses, yet to stay loyal to him if in the next few days Elliott admits publicly his guilt might drag them into the spotlight.
Gordon Elliott trains not only the legend that is Tiger Roll but the most likely next superstar of the sport, Envoi Allen. And there is his staff, his loyal staff, many of whom have been with him since he started training, they too are affected by this unsavoury situation. I hope if Elliott losing his license over this, someone close to him will take over, if only to keep the business afloat and to keep staff employed until he can return.
Let’s not beat about the bush, the reputation of horse racing is at stake here. Displaying disregard for the death of a horse is many magnitudes worse than anything Charles Byrne was found guilty of. He merely left a horse unattended for a short period of time – a misdemeanour nowhere near as scandalous as the I.H.R.A, being given money by government to spend on C.C.T. cameras to improve racecourse security and then spending the money of something else – Elliott is accused of bringing the sport into disrepute and even, given we are not at the moment aware of how this horse died on his gallops, if indeed it was dead when the photograph was taken, negligence or animal cruelty. 
I will be keeping my fingers crossed over the coming days that this is a storm in a teacup and that Elliott can fashion an acceptable explanation. If not, then the storm will overspill the teapot and furnish the low-lifes who inhabit social media with a howling tempest of vitriol that the newspapers will shine a bright light on.
Please let there be a satisfactory explanation. Please Gordon, be innocent.