02/03/2022
For National Girls and Women in Sports Day we thought it'd be fun to re-look at a piece about Hall of Fame trainer Janet Elliot, written by Don Clippinger for TGSF in November 2018. #NGWSD
Janet Elliot was supposed to come to the United States in 1968 as caretaker for an Irish horse bound for the Olympics. That didn’t work out. But she came anyway—and ultimately the result was a trail-blazing career that led to a place of honor in American Thoroughbred racing’s Hall of Fame. All the while, she has been a masterful horse person who has shown her respect and compassion not only for the horses but also for those who care for the horses each and every day.
Even when she is expected in the winner’s circle, she will, with little fanfare, watch as the horse makes its way back to the stable area. For Janet Elliot, the horse always has come first.
Her entry into American jump racing did not go according to script, much like the Olympics horse detoured from a trip to Mexico City more than a half-century ago. She landed in eastern Pennsylvania and secured a job with W. Burling Cocks, the dean of the Unionville-area jump-racing community. But she was involved in an auto accident, and her injuries prevented her from taking the position at Cocks’ Hermitage Farm.
When one door closes, another opens. Jonathan Sheppard, just beginning his ascent to the top of the sport, had an opening, and Elliot took the job. She was with Sheppard for nearly 11 years, off and on, rising to assistant trainer before he kicked her out of the nest to go on her own.
That, it should be noted, was 1979. Very, very few women were training horses, and even fewer were making a decent living in a tough game. But she had the skills, the right owners, and most importantly the right horses. A mere 12 years after she opened her own stable, Elliot dethroned Sheppard as the National Steeplechase Association’s champion trainer, winning two more races than her former employer. She had the year’s leading earner, Bill Lickle’s Victorian Hill, arguably the best steeplechase horse never to win a championship, and banked more than $800,000.
Her title was by no means a fluke. She had been among the sport’s top trainers for several years, and she trained the first winner of the Breeders’ Cup Steeplechase, Census, in 1986.
The hits kept coming. For Lickle, she trained Correggio, the Eclipse Award winner in 1996, and she trained Nancy W. Gerry’s Flat Top to two Eclipse statuettes separated by four years (1998 and 2002). Elliot was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 2009. She is the second woman, after jockey Julie Krone, and the only female trainer in the Hall of Fame.
In 1997, she created the Woodville Award, named for her Lancaster County, Pa., farm. Each year, the Woodville Award honors those tireless workers who toil out of the limelight and exemplify the best traits in steeplechase racing.
Tod Marks photo of Janet Elliot in March 2017