On his next appearance, Ela-Mana-Mou won a nursery handicap at Lingfield and was then moved back up in class for the Royal Lodge Stakes at Ascot Racecourse in which he was matched against Troy again.
Ridden by Greville Starkey, Ela-Mana-Mou was restrained in the early stages before making steady progress in the straight but was never able to reach the leaders and finished fourth behind Troy, Dickens Hill, and Northern Baby.
After a break of almost three months, Ela-Mana-Mou returned to the racecourse for the Champion Stakes at Newmarket, in which he failed to reproduce his best form when finishing sixth to Northern Baby.
At the end of the season, he was sold for 500,000 guineas to the bloodstock agent Peter Wragg[9] acting on behalf of Simon Weinstock and transferred to the stable of Dick Hern at West Ilsley.
He was found to be jarred up afterwards, and Peter Wragg subsequently discovered that the horse's neck and shoulders had been regularly treated by a physiotherapist, Pam Leadham, while he was at Harwood's stable.
In the Group One Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park Racecourse in July, he was pitted against Sea Chimes, an improving horse who recently won the Coronation Cup.
Ela-Mana-Mou produced a "typically dogged and determined performance"[11] to win from the Henry Cecil-trained three-year-old Hello Gorgeous and the Irish colt Gregorian, with Sea Chimes unplaced.
Later in the month, he returned to the one and a half mile distance for the first time in a year when he contested Britain's most prestigious all-aged race, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, for which he was made second favourite behind the French colt Le Marmot.
Ridden by Carson, Ela-Mana-Mou took the lead four furlongs from the finish and held the strong late challenge of the Prix de Diane winner Mrs Penny by three-quarters of a length.