The Gordy Elliott Horror Picture Show

An Capall's piece in the Irish Examiner

Due to the nature of social media righteousness reigned, piety poured and no tortured emotion remained unexpressed. Lifelong supporters of racing pledged that they’d never re-engage with their sport again

Early one Thursday morning in February 1992 the businessman Ben Dunne found himself standing on the ledge of a 17th-floor balcony at the Grand Cyprus Hotel in Florida, in the throes of a cocaine fuelled meltdown.As the police tried to talk him gently from calamity a woman in his suite, employed from the ‘Escorts in a Flash’ agency, explained to some other officers how his inability to access a safe in his room seemed to have triggered the psychotic behaviour. Happily, the situation was contained, Dunne was arrested and after posting a $25,000 bail bond, jumped on a flight home and arrived back in Dublin early on the following Sunday morning. He arrived just in time to see the details of a story he’d hoped to keep secret splashed all over the front page of The Sunday Tribune.
Public Judgement and reprobation were instant. The only question that mattered now to Dunne was: “what do I do next?” Sometime in 2019, at his workplace in, Co Meath, one of Ireland’s greatest ever national hunt trainers, Gordon Elliott, straddled the lifeless body of Morgan, a seven-year-old gelding who had died of natural causes. Somebody took a picture. A digital picture, stored in the cloud, uncontainable, where it lurked menacingly until earlier this week when it hit social media with more force than a bad novice chaser crashing into Becher’s Brook.


And due to the nature of social media righteousness reigned, piety poured and no tortured emotion remained unexpressed. Hearts were broken, sleep was lost, lifelong supporters of racing pledged that they’d never re-engage with their sport again. This first wave of anger was understandable. I
was an idiotic thing for Elliott to do, callous, dispassionate, insensitive. To paraphrase the refrain in Jilted John’s punk rock hit of 1978, ‘Gordon was a Moron.’ Thousands of keyboards, millions of bits and billions of bytes unleashed hellfire upon him in a spiral of ever-increasing hyperbole.

Wave one ended on Monday night when the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), who seem to make policy in an ever-increasing terror of negative British public opinion, placed an interim ban on his runners in their jurisdiction pending the judgement of the authorities in Ireland.
The only question that now should have mattered to Elliott, was, “what do I do next?”


Here’s what Ben Dunne did.

Despite a well-known indifference to public opinion, he called a press conference at his home that Sunday night and gave an intimate on-screen interview to RTÉ. His narrative contained terms such as:” ‘I can blame no one but myself,” or “I am no way looking for pity,” and “I was weak…. I have hurt a lot of people including myself.”
The ‘mea-culpa’ worked. He checked into a rehab clinic to get well again and began an arduous, but ultimately successful journey to a recovered reputation.

Second wave

Wave two of the Elliott saga broke the following day. Pragmatic and knowledgeable commentators explained on the airwaves how an agrarian society such as Ireland respects animals differently than urbanised Twitter users might demand.
How animals can be bred both for work and business as well as petting and preening. How Gordon Elliott, who like Ben Dunne could never be mistaken for a fluffy bunny, is still an immensely caring trainer of racehorses and who doesn’t produce hundreds of winners by mistreating them.

Others suggested that social media, normally loud on kindness and mental health matters, shouldn’t be allowed to tear down a man and plough his fields with salt because of a single act of stupidity. By Wednesday the BHA had begun to soften its cough and clarified that it “isn’t our intention to stop horses running, we want to see the best horses run at Cheltenham.”

It was as if somebody had suddenly woken up and realised with Cheltenham only two weeks away and amid an ongoing stealth campaign for a five-day festival, it probably wasn’t the best time to make any more enemies in Ireland than strictly necessary.
Especially on the day when their handicapper’s unilateral weight tax is applied to our entries in the Cheltenham handicaps, which this year collectively totalled 563 pounds of additional lead.

Third wave

The third wave was one of reflection for the keyboard and talk show judge and juries. Like those times when you yell at a loved one about dirty-dishes and painfully realise an hour later that this is not the hill you should have chosen to die on. Maybe, they thought, we were a little hasty in our rush to judgement.
Maybe sitting on a dead horse is not quite as bad as imprisoning family members. Or supporting a ‘sports-wash’ flat race in Riyadh while Saudi Arabia makes orphans in neighbouring Yemen. Maybe a hefty fine, a spell on the naughty step and stern ‘talking-to’ will ease my broken heart and let me sleep again.
Maybe we should stop short of the complete destruction of Gordon Elliott.
The best time to learn the position of the dangerous rocks is when the tide goes out, when the waves are all gone. This week many rocks were uncovered. Access to a computer does not bring with it a right not to be offended, ever, by anything. That knee jerk poison is harmful.

The BHA needs to calm down and resist the prevailing institutional appetite in Britain for unilateralism. Racing is structured on mutual respect for disciplinary codes in other nations and ignoring that long-established protocol might have nasty future consequences.
Most of the week’s learnings, however, are obviously for Gordon Elliott. His brand is that of an authentic man of the soil and it has served him well. In reality, he is the CEO of a multi-million-euro corporation, responsible for a hundred livelihoods and this was a massive failure of governance.
He didn’t mistakenly sit on that carcass – he chose where he sat. He needs to learn to make better choices, including where and when he allows ‘friends’ point mobile phones.

Like Ben Dunne, he needs to get out in front of his problem and take his medicine, publicly and with humility. Ben eventually re-emerged as a kind of prickly national uncle with opinions on everything and more than happy to share them. Most reasonable people were pleased to see him back building successful new businesses. It can be the same for Elliott if he takes good advice and handles the coming high tides carefully.

That’s what he needs to do next.
 
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Prob is, Sky haven't put up a banner across the bottom of their news screen and they have a reporter there.
 
The suspension means that there will be no runners in Elliott’s name at the upcoming Cheltenham Festival. However, it is believed contingency plans are being finalised for another licensed trainer to run Elliott’s yard in his absence.
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from the RP
 
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