If at first you don’t succeed - try, try again.
When Norwegian trainer Niels Petersen finally saddled his first winner of the Dubai World Cup Carnival on Thursday evening I couldn’t help myself from recalling the inspirational words written about Robert the Bruce, the fabled medieval warrior-king who after years and year of trying, ultimately claimed victory for the Scots during the Wars of Independence against England.
But that’s where the similarities between Brue and Petersen end. Niels hardly looks the sort who would resort to brute force in order to secure victory. He looks like he’s a very patient and unruffled individual. For sure he is. It has taken him as many as 74 attempts to open his Carnival account when the fashionably named Beat Baby romped home a popular winner of the Gulf News Sport handicap on dirt.
That is a remarkable achievement and all credit to Petersen and his team who have persevered over the years and never resorted to throwing in the towel.
The tweet Petersen posted on his Twitter account NPRacing@NPRacingNorway prior to Thursday’s race summed up the mood in the Scandinavian camp - ‘A tough night on Thursday for the NP horses butting heads with the new dirt track’.
However, any reservations he harboured about the dreaded kick-back at Meydan were emphatically squashed by Beat Baby and his rider Per-Anders Graberg, who smartly hit the front after the break and made every yard of the 1200m trip count.
A front-running approach is perhaps the easiest and simplest way to avoid the dirt, but to hold your position, and pluck out that extra acceleration when the others come charging at you, requires your horse to be at his fittest and bravest.
Beat Baby is something of an old hand. He’s been around since 2009 when he was previously trained my Howard Johnston in Ireland and then moved to Michael Scudamore’s yard in Herefordshire.
He won twice during this period but it was only when joining Petersen’s yard in Oslo, Norway that the son of Breeders’ Cup winner Johannesburg, appeared to really shine and post a couple of impressive Listed race victories.
Beat Baby has previously been campaigned on the turf at Meydan, where he also took in major races like the Meydan Sprint (G3) and the Al Quoz Sprint (G1), but Thursday’s performance on the dirt seems to have given Petersen one more option with the evergreen eight-year-old.
Petersen would not commit to future plans, and whether the horse was set to target some of the big sprint races during the Carnival but he did reveal to me that he hopes Beat Baby’s victory was only the start of better things to come for him with some of his Scandinavian stars including Stockholm Cup (G3) scorers Bank Of Burden and Without Fear.
A little homework told me Bank Of Burden became the most winning horse in Scandinavian history when he landed a historic Stockholm Cup at Taby in Sweden last September.
We should see him in action pretty soon and if the victory of Beat Baby is anything to go by then there’s a lot to look forward to from the Scandinavian raiders.
Who doesn’t want to see another power force emerging in an event that was devised as an International Racing Carnival.
