Gordon Elliott will return “bigger and better” when the ban that threatened to derail the three-time Grand National winner’s career comes to an end next week.
Racing was plunged into controversy when a photograph of Elliott sitting astride a dead horse on the gallops of his Cullentra House stable in Co Meath was published on social media last February.
The 43-year-old, who saddled Silver Birch (2007) and Tiger Roll (2018 and 2019) to victory at Aintree – and the Cheltenham Gold Cup with Don Cossack in 2016 – received a one-year suspension, of which six months were suspended, from an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) hearing the following month.
On Thursday Elliott will be free to make entries for Punchestown’s Flat card on September 14, and principal owner Michael O’Leary’s brother and racing manager Eddie said yesterday: “He’s done his time and he’s behaved exemplary through it. He’s learned a lot and he will come back bigger and better.
“He has changed in an awful lot of ways. This was never a welfare issue - this was a stupidity issue – and Gordon has done exactly as he said he would do.”
An IHRB spokesperson said: “Gordon Elliott is free to make entries from September 9.”
Elliott himself said that losing many of his star horses was the toughest pill to swallow after the controversy.
On March 2, in a reaction to the shocking picture, top owners Cheveley Park Stud removed all of their horses from Elliott's yard, including the then unbeaten superstar Envoi Allen.
Elliott told the Racing Post: "That was the lowest point throughout it all."
"I had worked very hard to source those horses, and then they were gone. Just like that.
"When Envoi Allen was here, there wasn't a night I didn't lie in bed thinking about him. And now that he is gone, there still isn't a night I don't lie in bed thinking about him."
Although hot favourite Envoi Allen fell at the Cheltenham Festival, two other Cheveley Park horses previously trained by Elliott - Quilixios and Sir Gerhard - won at the meeting for Henry de Bromhead and Willie Mullins, respectively.
Elliott said: "When Quilixios won the Triumph Hurdle, Henry de Bromhead rang me to say 'Well done', and he made a point of acknowledging me on television, which was decent of him.
"And Sir Gerhard hadn't crossed the line in the Champion Bumper when I got a text from Willie Mullins."
Elliott, whose training ban will end next Thursday, added: "I have never had a cross word with any of the owners who left.
"I still speak to them all and the gate is always open. I understand completely why they had to go.
"Having said that, I still have a brilliant bunch of owners here who have stuck by me and want to support me and want to see me get back to where I was."
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