Mat Ellerton’s stroke when holidaying in Bali earlier this year sent a shudder through the training ranks. As he continues his recovery, he has opted to close his stables. He told Matt Stewart he doesn’t know if he’ll be back.
The stroke has slowed Mat Ellerton up. Six months on, his shoulder is frozen and his left arm tends to dangle. His blood pressure is dangerously high and he has hypertension.
Ellerton never said much at the best of times. His website even jokes about it. He is working on his motor skills through regular therapy but answers to poignant questions – will you train again? Do you now see life differently? - come after a pause.
He is not working at a perfect gallop. He says he feels reasonably fine and can think straight but that infamous stroke in Bali back in July, his “wake up call”, turned Ellerton’s life on its head.
A harsh assessment would say the stroke was probably always coming. Ellerton was a heavy smoker who worked ungodly hours with animals that deliver more grief than glory.
The 15-time Group One winner, a Flemington perennial since the Hobsons Lodge days of the 1990s, when Ellerton horses trained from an old industrial factory would wander to work along the Maribyrnong River, has closed his stable.
Ellerton had been training horses since his mid-twenties. At 51, he faces a crossroad few horse trainers believe is there. Do I go on?
Ellerton’s stable website promotes its dedication to after life for retired racehorses but trainers rarely make such provisions for themselves.
He says he has no idea if he will one day reopen the stable doors. It’s possible.
He quotes the famous old saying, rounding if off with a chuckle. “You know what they say about trainers. They don’t retire, they just die.”
Trainers may not retire, but they don’t normally take holidays either. Ellerton had found a few brief escapes in recent years, seeking a life balance that is particularly elusive for horse trainers, but the Bali trip was something he, wife Leah and nine-year-old son Jacob had seen as a proper time out.
Ellerton had grown up in racing’s Dickensian era. Back in the Epsom days he worked for John Hawkes, a hard task master who rose robotically at 3am every day – along with all the stable zombies - and never grasped the concept of a break.
Many trainers have worked themselves to death.
Hawkes yielded, just once. He and Jenny flew to Hawaii. On the very first day, the couple was wandering along Waikiki beach when Hawkes declared: “I can’t do this.”
He was back at work the next morning – at 4am.
Ellerton was a bit more comfortable with sand under his feet than old Hawkesy but he’d only been in Bali a couple of days when he suddenly buckled over.
He’d spent the first day in bed with Bali Belly, which led to a blood clot and a stroke.
“I got up during the day and felt myself gonna pass out. The hotel had a doctor and they had me in the ambulance pretty quick. The first thing I remember was waking up under an MRI machine getting a brain scan,” Ellerton said.
“Maybe it was the next night, I learned I’d had a stroke to my right side. The left side of my face dropped. I had a weak left leg and I still have a weak left arm.”
First came the stroke, then the financial tsunami.
“You’re stuck in a foreign country with an insurance policy that’s, let’s just say not rosy. They want tomorrow’s invoice paid today,” he said.
“You know what they say about trainers. They don’t retire, they just die” - Mathew Ellerton
The cost of getting treated and getting out was a shock. It led to a GoFundMe page created by Melissa Kennewell, the wife of trainer Lloyd Kennewell, that raised its target of $100,000 and left Ellerton, a famous and successful horse trainer, feeling undignified.
One of the great illusions of the Sport Of Kings is that its more successful participants are wealthy. Horse trainers exist on the tightest of margins. Staff and insurance costs alone are crippling. Stress is constant.
As one prominent Flemington trainer observed this week: “We are all going broke. Make no mistake.”
Requiring others to help pay his medical bills “was the worst thing,” Ellerton said.
Ellerton and his cousin Simon Zahra had formed a successful partnership from 2009 but went their own way in 2021. Their relationship had become a little strained but the Maltese bond remained.
Zahra told racing.com that Ellerton had been overwhelmed by support from within the racing industry.
"He was rapt with the support he got from the racing industry, I think he was a bit more overwhelmed with everyone throwing in and that's what racing people do, they rally around their own and I think he was quite proud of that," Zahra said.
What’s next, then? If Ellerton trains again, it’s a while off. His focus now is playing catch-up time with his family and attending regular physio.
“It’s all I’ve done and all I’m used to. I really don’t know,” he said of the future.
“Mentally strong but physically weak, that’s how you’d describe me.
“I had to close the stable. I couldn’t do it physically. I felt I was taking one step forwards and two steps back. The right side of the brain is affecting the left side of my body. It’s been frustrating.
“It was hard advising the staff what I was doing and thankfully my wife dealt with that. She’s borne the brunt of much of this.”
Both as a stand-alone trainer and a partner with Zahra, Ellerton spent two decades fending off the training giants with a small stick.
He had a relatively small team and many were homebreds of prominent breeder and former Racing Victoria chairman David Moodie.
Ellerton was thrust into the role of head trainer for Moodie’s Hobson’s Lodge stables on the banks of the Maribyrnong in 1996. Gerald Ryan was on his way to slaying David Hayes to win the trainer’s premiership before a dramatic turn of events within the stable forced Ryan out.
“I had to close the stable. I couldn’t do it physically. I felt I was taking one step forwards and two steps back" - Mathew Ellerton
Ellerton, the quietly-spoken youngster with the quirky ponytail, won a score of Group Ones with horses like Black Bean, Paint, Casual Pass and Miss Kournikova.
Tragedy often followed triumph.
Crystal Lily’s victory for the cousins and Moodie in the 2010 Golden Slipper Stakes was Ellerton’s career centrepiece. Crystal Lily was then euthanised after breaking down in the track gallop in 2011.
Ellerton’s first Group One winner, Galaxy hero Black Bean, was euthanised after breaking down at Moonee Valley in March 2003 and another promising Ellerton horse, Cross Current, died under similar circumstances in the same race a year later.
Sunburnt Land dropped dead in a paddock after being struck by lightning in 2008 and dual Group One winner Desert Sky did likewise from a suspected heart attack one morning at the track.
Little wonder Ellerton had high blood pressure.
Danny O’Brien spent many mornings over many years in the company of Ellerton in Flemington’s “Tower Of Power.”
O’Brien realised over a decade ago that he had to break the routine “for my sanity” and established a training farm at Barwon Heads.
“Those 4am starts – unsustainable,” O’Brien said.
For a quietly-spoken horseman who had worked in racing stables his whole life, and had not tasted anything beyond it, Ellerton had always been curious about what else was out there.
“He’d have his ear plugs in all morning listening to Ross Stevenson on 3AW,” O’Brien said. “He’d be clocking horses and keeping abreast of current affairs. He’s always been curious about the big wide world out there.”
That world may loom closer as Ellerton battles to retain his health. He may train again or he may not. Training is not a life sentence.
When asked about Ellerton, another Flemington trainer buried under debt and sleeplessness and trying to figure an exit strategy, said: “Jesus, there’s more to life than training racehorses. There’s got to be.”
