If Gordon Elliott doesn't have an actual dartboard with Willie Mullins's face on it he probably does have a mental picture of one.
Ireland’s second most successful trainer sends the second most powerful string across-channel to Cheltenham in two weeks’ time and was second in line for an Irish pre-festival media invasion yesterday at his Co Meath stables.
Buzz Aldrin famously joked in The Simpsons that second is good too – "it's right after first" – but for racing's most obvious example of a man in a hurry it must be maddening.
Elliott is 38 today. In just a decade he has gone from being yet another amateur jockey realising he wasn’t going to make it to training a Grand National winner, attracting most of the top owners to a rented yard, before building a new yard from scratch on 78 acres, one that now houses 138 horses which happen to include the Gold Cup favourite, Don Cossack.
Burning ambition
The tale of how the panel beater’s son has risen from obscurity to assembling a team of almost 25 horses for National Hunt racing’s greatest festival is a remarkable one yet the burning ambition to usurp Mullins leaves little time for satisfied reflection.
“Willie sets the bar higher every week. That means having to try harder. If you don’t keep driving on, you’ll never get there,” he says.
So this summer Elliott will install a new equine swimming pool and 30 new boxes, as well as searching for new young talent that might help him further bridge the gap.
“Maybe then I might start to get my life back,” he jokes. “But then I end up going to other places, seeing something, getting jealous, and trying to add further.”
What’s refreshingly different about Elliott is there’s no attempt to hide this ambition behind platitudes. He prides himself on straight-talking, not bluntly for the sake of it, rather more likely to save time.
Swatting away queries about whether Don Cossack’s failure to win in two previous festival visits means a possible inability to produce his best around Cheltenham, Elliott forgives the first as a simple fall before describing as “deplorable” Bryan Cooper’s ride on the horse in last year’s Ryanair.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I am. He couldn’t have won with what happened to him. But Bryan was the first to put his hands up. He’s part of the team, we talked out what happened and that was the end of it,” he said.
Now Cooper has the choice of Don Cossack or the Mullins -trained Don Poli in the Gold Cup.
“I hope Bryan rides Don Cossack. I’d say in the back of his mind he knows which one he will ride but there’s no pressure on him. I’m hoping I’ll win the Gold Cup, but if I don’t and he’s on another horse I’ll be cheering him on,” Elliott says before that ‘M’ word crops up again in relation to Cooper’s choice.
"But I know the Willie Mullins factor is a lot bigger than the Gordon Elliott factor!"
Superb shape
The significance of
Davy Russell
riding Don Cossack in a post-race workout at the weekend was downplayed but Elliott did say he’s 99 per cent certain any sort of headgear won’t have to be applied to the horse judged on what he saw at Leopardstown when the horse schooled with the RSA favourite, No More Heroes.
Both horses again looked in superb shape under some spring sunshine with Cooper on the novice and the stable’s headman, and trainer’s best friend, Simon McGonagle, riding Don Cossack up the gallops.
“I’ve known Simon since we were 10 or 12 and he’s my right hand man. I have a wonderful team. I’d say I’m the oldest of the lot of us but we work together, socialise together. I know I was talking about getting my life back, but this is my life. I love it,” Elliott added.
That he saddled his first century of National Hunt winners in an Irish season last month, and Mullins still remains more than 50 ahead, won’t be lost on Elliott. However both men are on a level playing field in pursuing a first Gold Cup. Entering the record books will be reward enough but trumping his rival in the process would probably represent the bull’s-eye on top for the younger man.
Asked to name Don Cossack’s biggest danger, the response is immediate - “Willie Mullins.”
Elliott elaborated: "Vautour is classy but will he get home? I thought he was going to win the King George two out and he didn't. So Djakadam is the one to beat, I think. He's been there and done it in the Gold Cup. But I'm not going to question Ruby Walsh and Willie Mullins."
