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Six months of the suspension will be served suspended
Leading Irish national hunt trainer Gordon Elliott has been banned for a year and fined €15,000 after he was found guilty of bringing racing into disrepute having been photographed asride a dead horse while taking a phone call in 2019. Six months of that sentence will be suspended. He has accepted his sanction and will not be appealing.
As a result, Elliott will not be able to have runners at the Cheltenham Festival, which gets underway a week on Tuesday.
"I accept my situation and my sanction and I am satisfied with my engagement with the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board. It is not an easy job to sit on the panel but I was dealt with fairly,” Elliott tweeted after the hearing.
"I am in this situation by my own action and I am not going to dodge away from this. With my position in the sport I have great privileges and great responsibility. I did not live up to that responsibility. I am no longer the teenage boy who first rode a horse at Tony Martin's 30 years ago. I am an adult with obligations and a position in a sport I have loved since I first saw horses race.
"I am paying a very heavy price for my error but I have no complaints. It breaks my heart to see the hurt I have caused to my colleagues, family, friends and supporters. I have a long road ahead of me but I will serve my time and then build back better.
"Horses are my life. I love them. No-one comes into racing for money – it is a hard way to make a living. We are here because we love the horses. Anyone who has visited my stables at Cullentra will see the meticulous care with which we treat our horses. I was disrespectful to a dead horse, an animal that had been a loyal servant to me and was loved by my staff.
"Finally I want to thank my owners and my staff who, despite being let down by me, have been unstinting in their support. I will vindicate their faith in me."
The verdict on the case said: "The IHRB received an avalanche of complaints and the matter was rightly and fully scrutinised on the media."
The image of Elliott sitting on Morgan, who died from a heart aneurysm as a seven-year-old in 2019, first circulated on social media last Saturday and the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board immediately launched an investigation into the photograph.
