With just a fortnight to the Cheltenham festival, there’s only one thing keeping Gordon Elliott awake at night and it’s got nothing to do with him — yet.
In terms of stress levels, it is the British Horseracing Authority’s (BHA) new whip rules allowing a horse to be disqualified if a jockey uses their whip too much that makes the organisational headaches of sending up to 60 runners to the biggest meeting of the year seem a breeze.
Like most everyone else, Elliott is baffled by the BHA’s timing, changing the rules so close to Cheltenham and all but guaranteeing the whip subject dominates the run-up to the festival, but few have potentially more to lose.
Gold Cup
“I think it’s scary. It’s something that really worries me. It’s one thing I would lie in bed at night thinking about; you could win a Gold Cup and lose it the next day,” he said on Monday.
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Elliott won the Gold Cup in 2016 with Michael O’Leary’s Don Cossack. And he and the Ryanair boss will again try to land steeplechasing’s Blue Riband with Conflated on St Patrick’s Day.
Bizarre as it seems, there are more unlikely festival scenarios than one where a jockey desperate to win the greatest race of all gets their count wrong, reaches 11 strikes or more, and ensures a colossal reputational own goal for the sport.
Such is the convoluted nature of the new rules though that any “DQ” [disqualification] wouldn’t come immediately but rather days later after a BHA committee meeting.
It’s a tortuous boardroom framework almost perfectly structured to ensure a combustible character like O’Leary goes completely “tonto” as the sport continues to tie itself up in knots of needless red tape. What’s worse is that most jockeys travelling from Ireland haven’t even had the benefit of a bedding-in period to get used to a new whip regime that has been equated to a golfer needing to change their swing on the spot.
Elliott is relatively cautious in addressing the topic, perhaps keeping in mind his own past encounters with the BHA.
“If a 10-year-old child said that to you, that that’s what you’re going to do, you’d say, ‘are you sure?’” he told media at his Cullentra yard in Co Meath.
“It’s hard to believe. It’s like Brexit coming in. Brexit came in and no one realised what was going to happen and this is what’s after happening here. My biggest worry is for an owner. They pay all the training fees, buy the horse, do everything, and they could win at the Olympics which is Cheltenham and get a race taken off them for doing absolutely nothing wrong,” Elliott added.
Ayr disqualification
A horse getting disqualified on the very first day the rules were introduced immediately ruled out smug assumptions about such a diabolical scenario being outlandish.
That disqualification came in a humdrum race at Ayr: with the blood up at Cheltenham the potential for disaster is enough to keep anyone awake.
“I can’t understand it at all. It is something that worries me. Obviously, there’s a lot going on with the jockeys, how they let it get this far I’ll never know. It’s a massive concern. Someone very shrewd in the UK said to me they’ll be shocked if there’s not a horse disqualified at Cheltenham,” Elliott warned.
His frustration over the issue was obvious, pointing to how “you can drive a lad through the rails and get cautioned” and how “for the Irish lads it’s going to be very tricky” while overall “it’s sad that this is where we are”.
Even if there aren’t disqualifications some of the regulations are stringent enough to all but guarantee suspensions, the dates of which could easily rule a lot of jockeys out of subsequent festivals.
“It could actually get to the stage where there won’t be 40 jockeys to ride in the English national,” said Elliott.
Otherwise, the man who turns 45 on Thursday, and whose rise from obscurity is one of racing’s greatest success stories, was in noticeably relaxed form facing into a festival at which he has twice before been leading trainer.
His old rival Willie Mullins is an all but unbackable favourite to top the rankings this time, but Elliott’s competitive instincts ensures he dismisses suggestions he might enjoy going in under the radar.
“If you don’t put pressure on yourself going to Cheltenham you shouldn’t be training horses,” he said. “I put pressure on myself anyway, I always do, whether it’s Downpatrick or Cheltenham I want to win. We’ve a good team of horses going over, and the horses are running well.”
Conflated for Gold Cup?
The former “lunatic” Conflated is a legitimate Gold Cup contender this time, O’Leary having got his way by running him in last year’s Ryanair, but there are others that look to hold even more obvious claims.
Gerri Colombe is unbeaten and favourite for the Brown Advisory Novice Chase while Mighty Potter is an even shorter market leader for the Turners Chase. Teahupoo is to the forefront of betting for the stayers hurdle while Elliott admits he’ll be disappointed if either Delta Work or Galvin can’t win the cross-country.
Who ends up riding what is a quandary likely to remain unsolved until Jack Kennedy returns to his surgeon this Friday for a verdict on his broken leg.
Elliott described his chances of making it back for Cheltenham as “50-50″ and if that might err on the side of optimism there’s no doubt about his backing of the rider, while also having the insurance policy of already having lured Davy Russell out of retirement to fill in if necessary.
Kennedy will have to prove his fitness prior to Cheltenham while both Jordan Gainford and Sam Ewing are also waiting in the wings. Even if Kennedy completes a miraculous recovery in time, the trainer expects his old ally to still be in festival action.
Russell or Kennedy?
“If Jack is riding, I’d say Davy will still have his licence with him — knowing him” he said. “If Russell gets to Cheltenham, I’ll be happy. Davy isn’t able to fall like he was, but he’s worth his weight in gold around there.”
That capacity to perform at the festival counts for more than anything else.
Elliott’s first winner was in 2011 with Chicago Grey. Since then, there have been 33 more, a tally that puts him sixth on the all-time list. He continues to be enthralled by the festival no matter how much baggage gets thrown on it.
“I love it. There’s nowhere like it. These people [who] think Cheltenham isn’t everything; Cheltenham is everything. It’s the Olympics of our sport. If we don’t get any winner, I’ll be very disappointed,” he said.
