Irish Examiner view: Trainer's actions were appalling but we need a sense of proportion

Living in a bubble can encourage the idea of exceptionalism

Envoi Allen on way to winning for trainer Gordon Elliot and owner Cheveley Park Stud at Cheltenham last year.

We all, to some degree, live in a bubble and the scale of our immersion in that bubble informs our worldview. Living in a bubble can encourage the dangerous idea of exceptionalism.

It can encourage the indulgence that ordinary rules may be sidestepped as the bubble demands. It also shapes how we respond when the culture of a bubble is challenged from outside.

The responses to a crisis in one bubble from another bubble can be revealing.

The horseracing business is having such a moment. 

A picture of Meath trainer Gordon Elliott sitting on a dead horse, which he described as “an indefensible moment of madness”, and an unconnected one showing jockey Rob James in a similarly discrediting pose, have provoked outrage, shame, apologies, and may threaten the trainer’s immediate career. 

It already has had a negative impact. Elliott faces an Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board hearing on Friday.

Though Gigginstown’s Michael O’Leary has promised to support Elliott, Cheveley Park Stud has announced it will move their horses, including Envoi Allen, a Cheltenham favourite for next week’s festival, from Elliot’s yard.

That sanction brings up a question more significant than Elliot’s crass, unthinking behaviour, behaviour that in a sane world would, next Friday, attract a stiff fine, plus a warning that a recurrence would cost him his training licence.

Cheltenham risks

Cheltenham 2020 was a Covid-19 superspreader event so, despite assurances, it has the potential to be such again. 

That Irish trainers are free to participate, and bring the entourages needed, is entirely out of step with public health needs during a pandemic. 

Ranking aging geldings is simply not as important as isolating the virus.

Should the racing establishment blackball Elliot, he would be entitled to ask why racing has acted so energetically in his case but invoked no sanction of any kind against one of the industry’s greatest benefactors, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

The sheikh has not been accused of disrespecting a dead horse but a British court did find that Dubai’s ruler kidnapped and confined two of his grown daughters and threatened one of his six wives when she challenged his treatment of them. 

Is a dead horse in Meath more important than kidnapped, abused women in Dubai?

Animal welfare

Elliot might also ask why those, motivated by animal welfare concerns, were not as vociferous over the appalling situation of two ships, carrying almost 3,000 cattle, criss-crossing the Mediterranean since mid-December. 

Those ships have been refused entry at any port over disease fears. The unfortunate animals are to be slaughtered at sea after a months-long ordeal. 

Last September almost 6,000 cattle were drowned when the ship transporting them capsized on the way to China from New Zealand. 

This latest sorry episode must put further pressure on live exports, valued at €340m in this country last year.

Elliot’s behaviour was stupid and unthinking. He, and the industry he has, at 43, been so very successful in, will pay a heavy price. 

We will too unless we develop a sense of proportion and a commitment to upholding important principles no matter what apple cart, or camel train, is toppled by so doing.