Lynch mobs on the prowl again in wake of Elliott’s terrible error

Inside Track with John McIntyre

What is happening to Irish society? There is little forgiveness any more for people who step out of line or make mistakes – even of an unwitting kind. The keyboard warriors, some sections of the media and an increasing swathe of the population seem to glorify in the misfortunes of others.

We pose this question in the wake of the public hysteria and outrage generated by the admittedly shocking image of top Irish National Hunt trainer Gordon Elliott sitting on a dead horse at his gallops in Cullentra, Co Meath which emerged on various social media platforms last week.

Like everyone else, I was appalled by Elliott’s indefensible and heartless conduct. It was a betrayal of everything he should have stood for given that horses have been his lifeblood, provided him with financial security and no little status in the sporting world. Elliott’s pose smacked of a big-game hunter celebrating his kill.

There is no doubt he had done enormous damage to horse racing and that he will have to live with public odium for a long time to come, but did Elliott deserve to be front page headlines for the guts of a week and to be hung, drawn and quartered? A mass-murderer would barely have received such a vile level of condemnation.

Elliott is rightly going to have to live with the consequences of his utter lack of dignity for the horse named Morgan, which has served the stable loyally before his sad demise and while there have been suggestions of a laddish culture around his operation, he didn’t commit an act of barbaric cruelty as the animal was already dead.

Hit by a yearly ban (the last six months of which are suspended) from holding a trainer’s licence, Elliott also suffered the huge blow of one of his main patrons, Cheveley Park Stud, withdrawing all their horses from his yard, including jumping superstar the unbeaten Envoi Allen, which is one of the Irish bankers for next week’s Cheltenham Festival.

Fears that the stable’s other leading owners, like Gigginstown House Stud and Philip Reynolds, would follow suit have not materialised and with nearby trainer Denise Foster taking over the running of the yard, business will soon be back to almost normal even if Elliott won’t be on the racecourse and his reputation is in shatters for the time being.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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