PAT HEALY: Brand Ambassador Pat Healy shares his thoughts on the Gordon Elliott story that has dominated racing over the last number of days.

Gordon Elliott

First of all, there is no doubt that what Gordon Elliott did was stupid and there is no place for it in life or racing. He knows it and so does the rest of the racing world. It’s not what you want to see and I’m sure Gordon is sincerely sorry for it and I’m not going to defend him. However, what has disgusted me personally has been the social media reaction and trolling to it. There has been an outburst of pure victimisation of a human being who made a silly and stupid mistake. You can go round and round in circles about it, but he knows he’s done the wrong thing and for people to have said what they have said about him simply isn’t acceptable. Don’t forget Gordon has a Mom (Jane) Dad (Pat) and siblings Joey, Linda and Leanne who will read this stuff and from my perspective it’s just plain wrong. As a parent myself I cringe to think what if that was my son that these vile hurtful remarks were being made about him.

It’s obviously going to tarnish his reputation not to mention the financial losses it’s going to cause – both of which will be a bitter pill to swallow – so to have all this hatred on top of that just isn’t fair on him. Gordon employs over 70 people at Cullentra and to hear and see people suggesting he should be shut down is quite frankly ridiculous. This isn’t just one man and his silly mistake, this is the livelihood of all the staff he employs at his yard. To give that some context, if a factory in Trim, near to where he trains, was shut down and 70 people were left without a job it would make the front story national news, so for people to be saying Cullentra should be shut down because of one man’s stupid mistake is total madness.

As I’ve said, Gordon is in the wrong here and he’ll be the first to admit that, but one error doesn’t make him a bad person. I’ve known him a long time and he’s done a lot of good things in his life too. He’s a good person and this doesn’t change that. I really hope he hasn’t read some of the stuff I read because I’d struggle to find a human being who wouldn’t find that upsetting. We all have worries in our lives and I thought jockey Mark “Fish” Enright summed it up perfectly with his tweet on Tuesday night. Mark has struggled with his own mental issues and to see him write ‘Anger will pass but life can never return’ just shows what dark days people can go through and these vile and disgusting comments are the sort of thing that cause that. People jumped on the social media bandwagon and don’t realise the consequences of their actions. I don’t know of anyone who, if they read those negative comments, it would not affect them mentally. It doesn’t matter how thick-skinned someone is, those things hit home and I just pray he hasn’t been subjected to all of it.

I just don’t think it reflects very well on us as a society. To see comments flying in from all over the world criticising and degrading him just doesn’t sit well. There are much bigger and frankly more important things going on around the world at the moment. Things go on that are incomparable compared to what’s happened here and the abuse those things have received pales in comparison to what Gordon has received.

Gordon has proved down the years that he’s a genius at training racehorses and I have no doubt he’ll be back at the top table, but at the moment it’s a very difficult time for him and those close to him. I’m sure we’ll look back at this and I’d be pretty confident that a significant number of people who have said things will sit there and regret them. Karma is a funny thing and it has a habit of coming back and biting you.

Some have suggested that racing won’t recover from this and I certainly don’t buy into that. Racing as a sport offers far more great stories than it does bad ones. Every sport has its bad moments, that’s just part of the beast, but what makes sport and racing so great is that the good moments are so fantastic and memorable.