If Gordon Elliott was in turmoil heading into last year’s Cheltenham Festival then he was hardly alone.
A photo of the leading Irish trainer sat on a dead horse at his Cullentra House yard had emerged on social media and sent the entire sport into crisis on the eve of its biggest meeting, a meeting from which Elliott would be absent, banned for six months for bringing racing into disrepute.
In an interview with The Telegraph last month, Elliott revealed that he did not seek solace in escape, instead going through the torture of watching the Festival in its entirety on TV at home as three horses trained at Cullentra under the temporary watch of Denise Foster triumphed and, more painfully, so did three horses taken away from the yard by their owners after the scandal broke.
As well as the widespread outrage at the 44-year-old’s crass actions, there was also widespread concern, both for his future in the sport and his mental wellbeing away from it.
Twelve months down the line, though, the picture could hardly look more different as he sends his biggest ever team across the water to Prestbury Park.
Racing is a tight-knit community, and while many were quick to turn on him in the heat of the fury a year ago, in Ireland in particular they were equally swift to rally around Elliott once he had expressed his contrition and served his time. Some would even privately admit that they regret the vitriol of their public response.
“I have had some come up and apologise about what they said about me,” Elliott said in that Telegraph interview, though he also conceded: “Some can’t look me in the eye anymore.”
Elliott described his return from that six-month ban at Punchestown in September as among the best day’s racing he has enjoyed in his life and 24 hours later was applauded into the parade ring at Sligo after saddling a comeback winner.
In his homeland, where Elliott has had five Grade 1 winners already this season, including in last month’s Irish Gold Cup, it has largely been a case of forgive and move on, and those at his pre-Cheltenham briefing for the Irish press last month reported him to be on better form than ever.
Even in the UK, where he has had far fewer runners but still several high-profile Saturday winners, so much water has run under the bridge that in racing circles the fallout from the scandal is no longer much of a topic of conversation.
But this is the Cheltenham Festival and in much the same way that an athlete or a cyclist might return from a doping ban in the relatively docile surrounds of the circuit before being thrown back into mainstream scrutiny when winning gold at the Olympics, this will be Elliott’s first return to the broader court of public opinion since he was so hammered in it a year ago.
To those dealing with racing - and Elliott - day in, day out, it may seem strange and indeed unhelpful to suddenly be going back over old ground, and the race-going public will likely throw their support behind a broadly popular figure, too.
But there will be thousands of people tuning in around the country who have not watched racing since last year’s Festival and as the terrestrial broadcaster and destination of choice for the more casual viewer, ITV, in particular, will have a decision to make over how, if at all, they address the elephant in the room.
Or rather, the elephant in the winners’ enclosure, because make no mistake about it, Elliott will have winners. The six horses that were trained by Elliott up until his ban and went on to win at last year’s Festival mean he may well have been the meeting’s leading trainer (Henry de Bromhead and Willie Mullins both had six winners, but each included one horse switched from Elliott).
At the time of writing, he has around half-a-dozen favourites for this week’s meeting and plenty more runners with leading chances, including Galvin - one of the horses taken away from Cullentra but sent back this season - in the Gold Cup. In terms of equine firepower, the scandal has been nothing like as damaging as it threatened to be at the height of the furore.
A self-made success as a trainer with no background in racing, it is little wonder Elliott was so fearful of losing it all, but the resilience crucial to his initial rise from almost nothing has no doubt fuelled his resurgence this season, too.
In spite of the events of a year ago, few would begrudge him a week to cap it.
