Sporting Life
Gerri Colombe and Davy Russell are in command
Gerri Colombe looks a potential Gold Cup contender for Gordon Elliott

Aintree Friday reaction after Gerri Colombe's impressive victory for Gordon Elliott

By Adam Houghton
Horse Racing
Fri April 14, 2023 · 2y ago

Adam Houghton recaps an eventful few weeks for Gordon Elliott after Gerri Colombe's welcome victory at Aintree on Friday.

Relief was the overriding emotion from Gordon Elliott after Gerri Colombe had restored his lofty reputation with victory in the Mildmay Novices' Chase on a damp Ladies Day at Aintree, atoning for his narrow defeat at the Cheltenham Festival and taking his record under Rules to eight wins from nine starts.

"We are looking to the future now, Cheltenham is over," Elliott said afterwards – before attentions inevitably turned back to Cheltenham and to next year's Gold Cup. "That’s the dream in this game [the Cheltenham Gold Cup]. He looks like he has all the potential and is one to look forward to."

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It's fair to say that looking forward has been Elliott's coping mechanism recently during an eventful few weeks in which he's experienced the whole gamut of emotions, mainly because of a series of shock results on the racecourse. Some of them were welcome, others were less so, and one was so cruel that Elliott described himself as “heartbroken” in the aftermath.

Take Cheltenham, for starters, a meeting Elliott left with three winners to his name, perhaps on a par with expectations beforehand. However, surely even the trainer himself was shocked by the identity of two of those winners, namely Jazzy Matty (Fred Winter) and Sire du Berlais (Stayers’ Hurdle), who won their races at odds of 18/1 and 33/1, respectively.

The only race that really went to script for Elliott at the Festival was the Cross Country, a race he won for the fifth time in seven years with Delta Work. For good measure, he also saddled the runner-up, Galvin, who joins the winner in a six-strong team from Cullentra set to go to post for tomorrow's Randox Grand National.

Two races that didn't go as hoped for Elliott at Cheltenham were the Brown Advisory Novices' Chase and the Turners Novices' Chase. Elliott had the short-priced favourite in both, but he was left licking his wounds after the aforementioned Gerri Colombe suffered an agonising defeat in the Brown Advisory, beaten just a short head, and again when Mighty Potter could manage only third in the Turners.

However, as frustrating as those reversals must have been, the emotions felt by Elliott will have paled into insignificance compared to what he experienced at Fairyhouse on Sunday when Mighty Potter suffered a fatal fall in the WillowWarm Gold Cup Novice Chase.

"You're gutted, heartbroken," Elliott said in an interview with Racing TV's Gary O'Brien afterwards. "It's very hard to find horses like him. Very hard for Andy and Gemma Brown of Caldwell Construction, all the staff in the yard. It's tough, but that's horses. When you're in the game, you've got to keep your head up and keep going."

It was an interview which attracted a bit of criticism on social media in the aftermath, unfairly so in my view. Any experienced trainer will tell you that there are more bad days than good in this sport when you're involved at the coalface and, in any walk of life, the challenge is to not let the bad days consume you, instead concentrating on the future and whatever you can find to look forward to.

In National Hunt racing there are few more hotly anticipated prizes than the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the one race that nearly everybody in the sport wants to win. It's for that very reason that wide-margin point winner D B Cooper cost £225,000 at Thursday's Aintree Sale, potentially another star of the future for those who bought him, none other than Mighty Potter's owners, Andy and Gemma Brown.

Few would begrudge them should D B Cooper develop into a genuine Gold Cup candidate in years to come, nor Elliott, who memorably won the blue riband with Don Cossack in 2016 but has managed no better than third (with Conflated in the latest edition) in the years since.

Incidentally, the fact Willie Mullins has won three Gold Cups during the same period is symptomatic of the chasm that has developed between Mullins and Elliott since they were involved in a fierce battle for the Irish trainers' championship in 2017/18, one which went right down to the wire at the Punchestown Festival.

By way of comparison, this season Mullins' lead over Elliott in the trainers' championship currently stands at around €1.8 million, with Punchestown – a meeting at which Mullins is typically all-conquering – still to come later this month.

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It's largely because Mullins is so difficult to beat at Punchestown that Elliott has sent such a big team to Aintree this week, though it's fair to say that he hasn't had things all his own way on Merseyside, either, with the likes of Conflated, Found A Fifty and Absolute Notions all meeting with comprehensive defeats in Grade One company.

Hence the overwhelming sense of relief in the Elliott camp that Gerri Colombe won as emphatically as he did, capping what was almost a perfect season and putting himself right in the discussion for next year's Gold Cup, very much something to look forward to.

In the meantime, there is just the small matter of the Randox Grand National.

The Gold Cup might be the race for the purists, but none stirs the emotions quite like the National. From sheer delight to bitter disappointment, it promises to have it all – just don't be shocked if Elliott pops up with a record-equalling fourth win in the race.

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