Cheltenham Festival: Elliott counting down days

Gordon Elliott is counting down the days until the Cheltenham Festival as he prepares to send another formidable squad from Cullentra House to the Cotswolds.

The County Meath trainer will return to Prestbury Park with 40 Festival winners under his belt, putting him joint-fourth on the all-time list alongside Fulke Walwyn, behind Willie Mullins, Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls.

Elliott is the only man to deny Mullins the leading trainer title at the meeting in the last dozen years, taking that particular honour in both 2017 and 2018, with six and eight winners respectively.

With top-class mare Brighterdaysahead and reigning Stayers’ Hurdle champion Teahupoo leading a team that also includes promising novices Romeo Coolio and The Yellow Clay, there is little wonder he cannot wait to head back across the Irish Sea for the biggest week of the year.

When asked how he was feeling ahead of what is widely viewed as a season-defining four days for those at the top of the game, Elliott said: “I blow hot and cold. If I get revved up, 30 seconds later I’ll be grand.

“I don’t get too nervous until the horses go to the start for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, then you’ll start getting the butterflies in your stomach. I do anyway, that’s the way I am.

“I can’t wait to get there – and to get one winner would be great and anything after that is a bonus. I know it’s disappointing if you only have one winner, but you see what happened to Nicky Henderson last year and that can happen to anyone.”

Elliott had to be patient in his bid for Festival success last season, going two and a half days without a winner before Teahupoo hit the bullseye on day three.

In the end, he finished the meeting with three winners after Stellar Story’s Albert Bartlett triumph and Better Days Ahead’s verdict in the concluding Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Hurdle gave him a Gold Cup day double.

“I love winning anywhere, no matter where it is, but to have a winner in Cheltenham is just extra special, no matter who you are. Whether you’re Willie Mullins or the man that’s only ever trained one winner, it’s a brilliant feeling,” Elliott continued.

“Last year, I think we had six or seven seconds before Teahupoo won. The horses weren’t running bad, they were running out of their skins, but your horses can be running out of their skins in Cheltenham and you still need an awful lot of luck as well.

“It’s nearly a relief just when they’re running well because we’ve all been there when you have a day when everything is falling out of the back of the screen and you’re thinking ‘oh Jesus’. You’d have the weight of the world on your shoulders.

“We just weren’t getting the rub of the green last year, but thankfully Teahupoo put his head in front and that was a relief.”

There have been a raft of changes to the Festival programme this year, including the Turners Novices’ Chase being replaced by a novice handicap and the National Hunt Chase – now permanently named in honour of the Princess Royal – also becoming a novice handicap with the amateur rider restrictions for jockeys removed to allow professionals to take part.

The Glenfarclas Cross County Chase, a race Elliott has won five times in the last seven years, has also been switched from a conditions race to a limited handicap.

While unsure all the changes are positive, the trainer is hungry to win whatever races are on offer.

He added: “When we went to Cheltenham when we were young, I always thought you were going to see the elite and the best of the best. I think they might be getting a little bit close to diluting it.

“But if you told me there’d be 10 days at Cheltenham, I’d be delighted, I’d be there every day and I’d try to have a runner in every race because that’s our job.”