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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

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Birth of Gordon Elliott, Racehorse Trainer

Gordon Elliott, a County Meath-based National Hunt racehorse trainer, is born on March 2, 1978. After riding as an amateur jockey, he takes out a trainer’s licence in 2006. He is 29 when his first Grand National entry, the 33 to 1 outsider Silver Birch, wins the 2007 race. In 2018 and 2019 he wins the Grand National with Tiger Roll, ridden by Davy Russell and owned by Gigginstown House Stud, the first horse since Red Rum to win the race twice. In 2018 he also wins the Irish Grand National, with General Principle. On two occasions, in 2017 and 2018, he is the top trainer at the Cheltenham Festival.

With little family background in racing, Elliott is sometimes described as Irish racing’s great “blow-in.” The son of a panel beater, he grows up in Summerhill, County Meath, and enters the racing world at the age of thirteen, working for trainer Tony Martin on weekends and holidays. He takes out a licence as an amateur jockey when he is sixteen and rides on the racecourse and in point-to-points. His first winner on the racecourse comes on Caitriona’s Choice in a bumper at Ballinrobe Racecourse. He goes on to ride a total of 200 point-to-point winners and 46 winners on the racecourse, with the highlight of his riding career being his win in the Champion INH Flat Race on the Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained King’s Road in 1998. He also has five winners in the United States. Although based mainly with Tony Martin during his riding career, he spends a year in England with trainer Martin Pipe. He retires as a jockey through injury in 2005.

Elliott takes out his trainer’s licence in 2006 and has his first winner at Perth Racecourse on June 11, 2006. On April 14, 2007, he becomes the youngest trainer ever to win the Grand National. The winner, Silver Birch, is owned by Brian Walsh of County Kildare, and ridden by Robbie Power. Despite having won the Grand National, Elliott has not at this stage trained a winner on the track back home in Ireland. The first winner he trains in Ireland is Toran Road at Kilbeggan Racecourse on May 5, 2007.

Although best known for his victories over jumps, Elliott has a major win on the flat in August 2010 when Dirar wins the Ebor Handicap at York Racecourse. He also has victories at Royal Ascot, with Commissioned winning the Queen Alexandra Stakes in 2016 and Pallasator winning the same race in 2018.

Originally based at Capranny Stables, a rented yard in Trim, County Meath, Elliott purchases the 78-acre Cullentra House Farm at Longwood, County Meath in 2011 and builds a training facility with stabling for over 200 horses, gallops, schooling grounds, and an equine pool.

Elliott’s first winner at the Cheltenham Festival as a trainer is Chicago Grey in the National Hunt Chase Challenge Cup in 2011. He wins the 2016 Cheltenham Gold Cup with Don Cossack. In 2017 he is top trainer at the Cheltenham Festival and the following year repeats the achievement.

On April 2, 2018, Elliott wins the Irish Grand National with General Principle, ridden by JJ Slevin. He has saddled 13 of the 30 horses in the field. That year he also wins the Aintree Grand National with his horse Tiger Roll, ridden by Davy Russell and owned by Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown House Stud, narrowly beating the Willie Mullins runner Pleasant Company. He also trains the third place horse Bless The Wings. He wins the Aintree Grand National again in 2019 with Tiger Roll, only the sixth repeat winner in the race’s history.

On February 28, 2021, the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) launches an investigation into an image of Elliott, which is widely circulated on social media, sitting on a dead horse and making a peace sign. Elliott confirms the photograph is genuine, issues an apology and says he is fully cooperating with the investigation. The animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the British Horseracing Authority condemn the photograph. On March 1, the British Horseracing Authority announces that Elliott will be banned from racing horses in Britain while the investigation in Ireland takes place, although the horses will be allowed to run if transferred to another trainer. It is confirmed that the photo was taken in 2019 and shows a horse owned by Gigginstown House Stud, Morgan, that had died while being ridden on the gallops.

Minister of State for Sport Jack Chambers says that Elliott must be “held fully accountable for his actions” and that the photograph shows “a complete and profound error of judgement.” He tells Morning Ireland that he is “shocked, appalled and horrified” by the image and that it is “really disturbing from an animal welfare perspective.”

On March 2, Cheveley Park Stud announces that they will move their horses Envoi Allen and Quilixios to Henry de Bromhead and Sir Gerhard to Willie Mullins. Elliott’s leading owners, Michael and Eddie O’Leary, through their Gigginstown House Stud, express their support for him despite being “deeply disappointed by the unacceptable photo.”

On March 5, 2021, the IHRB convenes a hearing and bans Elliott from racing for twelve months with six months suspended, leaving him unable to train or attend a race meeting or point-to-point until September. He is also ordered to pay costs of €15,000. He accepts the ruling. Later that month the stable employee who took the photograph is banned for nine months (with seven suspended).

In July 2021, Elliott is featured in a BBC Panorama programme that investigates the fate of British and Irish racehorses who end up in abattoirs. Three of the horses were formerly trained by Elliott, who denies having sent them to the abattoir. He says two of the horses were sent to a horse dealer to be re-homed or humanely euthanised, while the third was given to someone else at the owner’s request. The former horses were bay mare Kiss me Kayf, who had had no success on the racecourse, and bay gelding High Expectations, who had won seven races. The latter horse, owned by Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, was grey gelding Vyta Du Roc, who won the 2016 Reynoldstown Novices’ Chase. Following the programme, Munir and Souede remove their horses from Elliott’s yard.

In 2007, Elliott wins the inaugural Meath Sportsperson of the Year award. He wins the award again in 2018 and 2019.

Elliott is engaged to champion point-to-point rider Annie Bowles, with whom he sets up Cullentra House Stables. The couple separates and Bowles marries Ballarat trainer Archie Alexander.[28]


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Opening of the Royal College of St. Patrick in Maynooth

The Royal College of St. Patrick in Maynooth, County Kildare, is established by the Maynooth College Act 1795 and opens on October 1, 1796. Today known as St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, the college and national seminary on its grounds are often referred to as Maynooth College.

Thomas Pelham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduces a bill for the foundation of a Catholic college, and this is enacted by parliament. It is built to hold up to 500 students for the Catholic priesthood of whom up to 90 are to be ordained each year. It is once the largest seminary in the world.

The town of Maynooth is the seat of the FitzGeralds, Earls of Kildare. The ivy-covered tower attached to St. Mary’s Church of Ireland is all that remains of the ancient college of St. Mary of Maynooth, founded and endowed by Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. On October 7, 1515, Henry VIII grants licence for the establishment of a college. In 1518, the 9th Earl presents a petition to the Archbishop of Dublin, William Rokeby, for a license to found and endow a college at Maynooth, the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1535 the college is suppressed and its endowments and lands confiscated as part of the Reformation.

The present college is created in the 1790s against the background of the upheaval during the French Revolution and the gradual removal of the penal laws. The college is particularly intended to provide for the education of Catholic priests in Ireland, who until this Act had to go to Continental Europe for their formation and theological education. Many are educated in France, and the church and government are concerned at the Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, and at the same time at the risk of revolutionary thinking arising from training in revolutionary France. A number of the early lecturers in Maynooth, are exiles from France. Also among the first professors is a layman, James Bernard Clinch, recommended by Edmund Burke. Also relevant is the enactment of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793.

The college is legally established on June 5, 1795, by the Maynooth College Act 1795 as The Royal College of St. Patrick, by act of the Parliament of Ireland, to provide “for the better education of persons professing the popish or Roman Catholic religion.” The college is originally established to provide a university education for Catholic lay and ecclesiastical students, the lay college is based in Riverstown House on the south campus from 1802. With the opening of Clongowes Wood College in 1814, the lay college is closed and the college functions solely as a Catholic seminary for almost 150 years.

In 1800, John Butler, 12th Baron Dunboyne, dies and leaves a substantial fortune to the college. Butler had been a Roman Catholic, and Bishop of Cork, who had embraced Protestantism in order to marry and guarantee the succession to his hereditary title. However, there are no children to his marriage, and it is alleged that he had been reconciled to the Catholic Church at his death. Were this the case, a Penal Law demands that the will is invalid, and his wealth is to pass to his family. Much litigation follows before a negotiated settlement in 1808 that leads to the establishment of a Dunboyne scholarship fund.

The land is donated by William FitzGerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster, who had argued in favour of Catholic emancipation in the Irish House of Lords. He lives nearby at Carton House and also at Leinster House. The building work is paid for by the British Government with the parliament continuing to give it an annual grant until the Irish Church Act 1869. When this law is passed the college receives a capital sum of £369,000. The trustees invest 75% of this in mortgages to Irish landowners at a yield of 4.25% or 4.75% per annum. This is considered a secure investment at the time but agitation for land reform and the depression of the 1870s erodes this security. The largest single mortgage is granted to the Earl of Granard. Accumulated losses on these transactions reaches £35,000 by 1906.

The first building to go up on the site is designed by, and named after, John Stoyte. Stoyte House, which can still be seen from the entrance to the old campus, is a well-known building to Maynooth students and stands very close to the very historic Maynooth Castle. Over the next 15 years, the site at Maynooth undergoes rapid construction so as to cater for the influx of new students, and the buildings which now border St. Joseph’s Square (to the rear of Stoyte House) are completed by 1824.

The Rev. Laurence F. Renehan (1797–1857), a noted antiquarian, church historian, and cleric, serves as president of St. Patrick’s from 1845 until 1857. Under Renehan, many of the college’s most important buildings are constructed by Augustus Pugin.

In 1876, the college becomes a constituent college of the Catholic University of Ireland, and later offers Royal University of Ireland degrees in arts and science. Even after the granting of the Pontifical Charter in 1896 the college becomes a recognised college of the National University of Ireland in 1910, and from this time its arts and science degrees are awarded by the National University of Ireland. However, during this time the Pontifical University of Maynooth continues to confer its degrees in theology, because until 1997 theology degrees are prohibited by the Royal University of Ireland and its successor the National University of Ireland.

In 1997, the Universities Act, 1997 is passed by the Oireachtas. Chapter IX of the Act provides for the creation of the separate Maynooth University. This new university is created from the college’s faculties of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, and Science.

In 1994, W. J. Smyth had been appointed to the position of Master of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth (NUI). In 1997, this position is converted into President of Maynooth University. After his 10-year term ends in 2004, he is replaced by John Hughes as president of Maynooth University and a new line of heads for the college.

By 2016, the number of resident seminarians has dropped from several hundreds to just 40 to 60. In August 2016, it is revealed that, due to frequent use of Grindr by college students, the then Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin decides to transfer the students from his diocese to the Irish Pontifical College in Rome. According to Martin, “there are allegations on different sides,” one of which of an “atmosphere that was growing in Maynooth” of a “homosexual, a gay culture, that students have been using an app called Grindr,” which “would be fostering promiscuous sexuality, which is certainly not in any way the mature vision of sexuality one would expect a priest to understand.” Subsequently, the college trustees order a review of the college’s policy on social media use.