Gordon Elliott: Ben Linfoot reflects on a visit to the top Irish trainer ahead of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival
Ben Linfoot reflects on a stable visit to Gordon Elliott's ahead of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival with the top Irish trainer set to send over his biggest team yet.
Gordon Elliott has his Cheltenham Festival entries stuck to his fridge. Three pages of A4 are required. With less than two weeks to go until the meeting he is relaxed and confident, even though he has just had to rule the well-fancied Champagne Classic out of the National Hunt Chase.
One less runner and a high-profile one at that. But Elliott is still set to take his biggest ever team to Prestbury Park.
In 2011, the first year he had winners at the meeting, he took eight horses. Chicago Grey and Carlito Brigante came back to Cullentra House as winners. “To get the taste of it was unbelievable,” says Elliott and, 25 Festival winners later, his thirst is yet to be quenched.
In 2017 he became top trainer at the Festival for the first time. He took his biggest ever team – 29 horses – and came back to Ireland with six winners. A year later he was top trainer for the week again. From 32 horses he came back with an incredible eight (8) winning trophies.
It was inevitable that such phenomenal strike-rates couldn’t be maintained. Last year he took his largest squad yet to Cheltenham, 45 horses, and he had three winners. A good return, but not what he had become accustomed to. Four seconds and four thirds suggest he wasn’t far from collecting his usual haul.
Elliott wants that top Cheltenham trainer title back. He didn’t say such a thing but his ambition hits you in the face. When talking about Tiger Roll, a horse bidding for a history-making third successive Grand National win at Aintree, I ask whether the setback he endured earlier in the season has compromised his chances at the Festival, with the aim of peaking in Liverpool in mind.
“I love to win at Cheltenham number one,” Elliott says. “The National is after that.”
That’s clear, then. It’s all about Cheltenham.
He recalls his first ever runner at the Festival. Brandon Mountain, a 100/1 shot that was pulled up in the Fred Winter in 2006. He met his mentor, the legendary trainer Martin Pipe, before the race that day who enquired why he was there. When Gordon told him he had a runner Martin asked if it had a chance. Gordon said probably not and Martin asked him the same question again: “What are you doing here?”
“He says ‘you should always keep your horses in the worst company and yourself in the best’,” remembers Elliott. “I’ve always thought of that.”
His horses are in the best company these days, but they deserve to be there. Elliott thinks this will be his biggest ever team at Cheltenham, ’52 or 53 if it was tomorrow’, and it’s always difficult for a punter to strike a line through an Elliott-trained horse.
As if to reiterate the point that he’s prioritising the Cheltenham Festival for Tiger Roll, he nominates the Grand National hero as his best chance of the week.
“If he gets back to 75 per cent of the form he was in last year, on ratings he’s thrown into a Cross Country race,” Elliott says.
“He was over at Cheltenham last week and had a good school around. I was happy with his run in the Boyne Hurdle, he will have come on a lot for it and he’ll do a bit of work next Tuesday or Wednesday morning. That will be it for him. With a clear round he won’t be far away.”
A Grand National great of the modern era, Elliott acknowledges his stable star’s celebrity.
“Everyone that comes in the yard now, whether it’s the postman or the feed man, whoever, they all want to see Tiger Roll. He’s a household name.”
Six years ago Tiger Roll was Elliott’s sole winner at the 2014 Festival. A 10/1 chance in the Triumph Hurdle. He won one of his next 11 starts and looked for all the world like he was regressing. And then he switched to fences, eventually winning a National Hunt Chase, two Cross Country chases and those two Grand Nationals.
“To be honest, when he won the Triumph Hurdle we thought that was his Gold Cup,” Elliott says. “To think he’s won at four Cheltenham Festivals since then, he’s just been unbelievable.
“If there’s one race I want to win at Cheltenham this year it would have to be the Gold Cup, but if I didn’t win that I’d love Tiger Roll to win at Cheltenham. The cheer would be unbelievable. That would be the race I’d love to win.”
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Tiger Roll is rated 171. Delta Work, the Gold Cup third favourite, is rated 171. They worked together the morning we were there. “Neither are flashy work horses,” says Elliott. “They don’t usually work together but I thought they would today. I’m pleased with them both.”
I didn’t ask Elliott why he’s never run Tiger Roll in a Gold Cup. I’ve asked him that before and you don’t ask him a stupid question twice. He doesn’t think it’s the right race for him but the Cross Country very much is.
But is the Gold Cup the right race for Delta Work?
“He jumps, he travels and he stays,” Elliott says. “For me you have to stay to win a Gold Cup and have a bit of class to travel halfway through a race.
“He seems in good form. Shane, who rode him this morning, was happy and if he’s happy I’m happy.
“He was lame after Down Royal and that happens, but thankfully he’s bounced back and he’s been very good at Leopardstown on both days. I think the Gold Cup will suit him. He’s been to Cheltenham twice, he’s won there and he’s been third, he handles the track, the extra two furlongs will suit him and I’m really looking forward to it.”
A win for Delta Work in the Gold Cup would give Elliott his second win in the race, following Don Cossack’s 2016 victory.
“It was definitely my finest day at Cheltenham, to win a Gold Cup was unbelievable and hopefully we go back this year with a chance.
“He wouldn’t be as flashy as Don Cossack at home, Don Cossack was a very good work horse, but Delta just does what he has to do.”
Delta Work would be Elliott’s best chance in the championship races. He has Coeur Sublime for the Champion Hurdle, ‘an each-way chance who worked very well the other morning’, and Apple’s Jade in the Stayers’ Hurdle for ‘what will probably be her last hurrah’.
But, aside from Tiger Roll and Delta Work, the exciting element of Elliott’s team this year is Envoi Allen.
Seven from seven under Rules, Envoi Allen is a burgeoning talent and is all set to kick-off what could be a historic Wednesday at the Festival; his appearance in the Ballymore, Tiger Roll’s quest for a fifth Festival victory and that lip-smacking Champion Chase.
He’s a best price 6/4 to win the Ballymore. That race is the plan but Elliott stresses, again, that heavy ground to start the Festival could see him switch to the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle on the opening day.
That would be an interesting call, but an almost-weary Elliott is not interested in running him in the Champion Hurdle, even in this most wide-open of years.
“If you listened to every pundit and press person in the world they’d have you in the mad house, you do what you want to do with your own horses. I’ll do what I want to do and if I decide it’s the Champion Hurdle that’s the way I’d go, but this year he definitely won’t be going there.”
I’m putting words in his mouth here but you sense it's hard enough to win at Cheltenham without veering a top novice away from novice company. Elliott recalls a situation when he did just that with Samcro, albeit at the Punchestown Festival, in 2018.
“I took Samcro out of his novice company a couple of years ago at Punchestown. He was travelling well but then he fell three out. This year we’ll keep Envoi Allen in his own company.”
Talking of Samcro, the one-time Next Big Thing has been given the green light for Cheltenham. He goes to the Festival on the back of a fall and then a defeat to Faugheen, but that loss doesn’t look too bad now and the eight-year-old has had wind surgery since.
“The plan is to go for the Marsh Chase now,” Elliott said. “He’s a bit of a forgotten horse and he has been disappointing, but if he could come back to his A-game he would have a chance in this race, but he’s a bit hot and cold. Hopefully we get him on a going day.
“He’s always worked well. We’ve just had problems with him scoping wrong. He worked well on Wednesday morning and scoped clean after it so hopefully we can keep him right now for the next 10 or 12 days and get him over there.”
Of the rest Queens Brook would be the most interesting of his Champion Bumper trio: “Jamie Codd is very sweet on her and he’s egging me on to run so you have to listen what he says. On homework you’d say this mare is a nicer mare [than his Champion Bumper winning-mare Fayonagh] but Fayonagh’s gone and done it so you couldn’t question her.”
And then there is the handicap squad. If I had to pick five…
Ravenhill: “I think the Kim Muir is made for him. He goes well fresh and this has been the plan.”
Galvin: “He’s got a bit of experience now, he’s run well around Cheltenham before, Davy Russell will ride and he’ll have a good chance all being well.”
Column Of Fire: “I think whatever race he goes for he’ll have a great chance.”
Aramax: “The more the ground dries out for him the better.”
Tronador: “I’m going to put headgear on him and he’s a horse that stays very well. I’m happy with his mark.”
Chances. Everywhere you look. You could stare at that fridge a long time envisaging what might happen.
“What are you doing here?” said Martin Pipe. To train as many Cheltenham Festival winners as possible would now be a fair answer. Once again, the Elliott team looks well up to the task.
This is Tronador. Really like him for the #Boodles Fred Winter at 14s/16s off 129.@gelliott_racing is going to put headgear on him in the race - something he’s done in the contest before with great success.#CheltenhamFestival pic.twitter.com/WiAxOof7AO
— Ben Linfoot (@BenLinfoot) February 27, 2020
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