Gordon Elliott
Hailing from Summerhill, County Meath, Gordon started his racing career as an amateur jockey. Having had little family within the racing industry, he began in Tony Martin’s as a young 13 year old going in on the weekends and school holidays. It was from there he took out his jockey’s licence as a 16 year old riding both in Point-To-Points and on the track. He went on to ride 200 Point-To-Point winners and 46 winners on the racecourse, which included winning the Punchestown champion bumper aboard the Nigel Twiston-Davies trained Kings Road in 1998. Not to be forgotten are his 5 winners in the USA and riding in the Maryland cup on 3 occasions. Gordon spent 2 seasons working for English trainer Martin Pipe, winning on Iris Bleu at the 2002 Cheltenham November meeting. Martin has continued to be a mentor for Gordon through the years.
In 2005 Gordon retired from race riding to venture into the world of training, taking out his licence in 2006. He caught everyone’s attention when winning the Aintree Grand National in 2007 with Silver Birch. The significance of this being he had yet to train a winner in Ireland, having only had winners in Britain. Toran Road was his first winner on Irish soil in 2007 at Kilbeggan, owned by his father’s syndicate, Barstool Prophets Syndicate and ridden by his brother, Joey Elliott.
It was the start of an illustrious career. 2016 brought Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascot success with Don Cossack winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Commissioned landing the Queen Alexandra Stakes. The 2017 Cheltenham festival was a standout with a treble landed by Labaik, Apples Jade and Tiger Roll on day 1 of the festival. This was the first half of a combined 6 winners making him the leading trainer for the 2017 Cheltenham Festival. He followed up with a back to back leading trainers title the following year with 8 winners.
Punchestown festival 2017 marked a 1000th winner on the track, along with recording his first Group winner on the flat with Beckford winning the Group 2 Gain Railway Stakes at the Curragh. Gordon became the first trainer to win the 3 Grade 1s at the Fairyhouse winter festival (The Royal Bond novice hurdle, The Hattons Grace and The Drinmore).
2018 saw Irish Grand National glory with General Principle and a second Grand National success with Tiger Roll, who went on to win back to back grand nationals, the first horse to do so since the legendary Red Rum. Along with reaching an impressive milestone of 210 winners in a season.
Since then Gordon has trained 41 Cheltenham festival winners, over 100 Grade 1 winners and over 2700 winners (as of 30/10/25). Another notable achievement was at Navan racecourse in December 2021 in which he became the first trainer in both Ireland and Britain to win 7 races on the racecard.
He has since become the first Irish trainer to win all 5 jumps races on the card at Far Hills racecourse, USA. Which includes both the American Grand National, America’s richest steeplechase, and the Foxbrook Champion hurdle.
Gordon originally started off training at Capranny Stables based in Trim, Co. Meath, before purchasing the 87 Acres property – ‘Cullentra House Farm’ in Longwood, Co. Meath in 2011. Since then the yard has grown and developed into a high class training facility; including 3 purpose built gallops, schooling strip, horse walkers and an equine swimming pool to name a few.