With the emergence of Square de Luynes, a horse who has been in a class of his own in Scandinavia for the past three years, comparisons are being made with the great Noble Dancer, a colt renowned trainer Terje Dahl took from Norway to the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe back in 1976, when he was an unlucky fourth to Ivanjica. That run became a springboard to an outstanding career in North America, where he was famous from coast to coast.
What these two runners have in common is that they both confirmed that a top-class Thoroughbred can come from all corners of the racing world.
Noble Dancer was sold to Norway after his juvenile season in England with a Timeform rating of 99. The son of Prince De Galles was a unique horse but, although he was a champion nearer to my home in Norway, I had to cross the Atlantic to fully appreciate his qualities.
My first trip to North America, with destination Chicago in 1986, also became my first contact with racing in North America. With no racing at Arlington Park, I found my way to Hawthorne, and enjoyed a warm welcome in the press box, where fellow writers soon started quizzing me about Noble Dancer.
“Do you have many horses as good as Noble Dancer in Norway?” was a question often put to me. The answer was a resounding ‘no’.
I had been a big fan of Noble Dancer as he dominated at Norway’s only racetrack, Øvrevoll, when I was a teenager. I knew he had done well Stateside after his export in 1976, and when I found out quite how good his record was, well, then it became a whole lot easier to comprehend their interest in ‘the horse from the Land of the Midnight Sun’, who was so successfully campaigned by Thomas Kelly.
My trip was made ten years after his excellent run in Paris, Noble Dancer was now retired, his stud career was not shaping up too well, but he retained his star status in racing circles.
Paralyzed for more than a month
He took some time to acclimatise after shipping across from Norway. He ran fourth behind Youth in the 1976 Washington DC International at Laurel Park, but it was in his second season with Kelly that he began to blossom.
Noble Dancer’s first stakes win came as he took the 11-furlong G2 Tidal Handicap in course record time at Belmont Park in June 1977. But after he went down with a serious virus and became very ill. His career was in the balance. The colt lost 200lbs in a week and was paralyzed for more than a month.
Remarkably, Kelly got him back to fitness and Noble Dancer returned to the track with a win in allowance company the following January before taking the G2 Bougainvillea Handicap at Hialeah Park and the G2 Hialeah Turf Cup the following month. In the latter event, he gave the high-class turf runner Tiller, a winner of 16 races, 12lbs pounds and beat him readily.
Kelly and owner Haakon Fretheim took their new star to Santa Anita for the 12-furlong G1 San Luis Rey Stakes. Whether Noble Dancer could handle the stamina test was not an issue. He had won two editions of the Oslo Cup over the same distance in Norway. The San Luis Rey, however, was going to be against much tougher rivals, with the likes of Exceller, Crystal Water, Properantes and Text in opposition.
Noble Dancer won again, this time doing it the hard way by making the running. He held on by a neck from the fast finishing Properantes. Text was third and Exceller fourth.
Cauthen under fire
Next up was the G1 San Juan Capistrano over 1¾ miles at Santa Anita. A huge crowd made Exceller, ridden by Bill Shoemaker, the slight favorite to beat Noble Dancer, who had Steve Cauthen on his back. Horseplayers were proved right - but they had some scare in the closing stages. Noble Dancer had set the pace before being headed by Exceller, who went a length up on him in mid-stretch. Noble Dancer rallied and the wire came just in time for Exceller, who prevailed by a diminishing neck.
The two champions met again in the Hollywood Invitational at Hollywood Park in May. The Dancer checked in third behind Exceller and came back with an injured suspensory ligament. It meant three months on the sidelines.
Back with a bang, Noble Dancer returned with an impressive six-length win in the G1 United Nations Handicap at Atlantic City. But three below-par performances - in the Man o’ War, the Turf Classic and the Washington DC International - seemed to signal that his best days were behind him.
Cauthen came under fire for having fought the horse in these races and Kelly made a rider change. He also asked Noble Dancer to redeem himself rather quickly, running him in the Florida Turf Cup at Calder just a week after Laurel Park. Jacinto Vasquez replaced Cauthen and he enjoyed the ride, winning by two lengths.
Weight-carrying feats
The following year, in 1979, Noble Dancer carried top weight of 128lbs to victory in the G3 Canadian Turf Handicap at Gulfstream Park, shouldered 129lbs to an easy win in the G2 Pan American over the same track and took the San Luis Rey at Santa Anita for a second time, with Exceller third.
They met again in the San Juan Capistrano, but this time Tiller grabbed the limelight, just getting the better of Noble Dancer, who beat Exceller for second. Noble Dancer’s trip back to Miami was made on a freight plane, making two stops en-route. He got out to stretch his legs on the runway on both occasions.
Ann Dahl, wife of the late Terje Dahl, who discovered Noble Dancer as a young horse, recalls, “Noble Dancer was always such a calm and collected horse, and very kind. He never turned a hair, and he loved children.”
With two impressive runs in California under his belt, Noble Dancer was now prepared for a second crack at the Hialeah Turf Cup. Noble Dancer had a particularly good record in Florida (just the one defeat - when sixth in 1978 G2 Donn Handicap) and, in order to persuade rivals to take him on, Hialeah’s racing secretary assigned him 130lbs.
It was a tall order, not least as the event came up no more than six days after his hard race in the San Juan Capistrano, and Bowl Game, carrying 122lbs, beat him by three parts of a length.
Kelly gave him a long rest after this race and Noble Dancer returned to winning form with a second success in the United Nations at Atlantic City in August.
Traffic problems, and a wide trip, were contributing factors when he ran fourth in his subsequent outing, in the G2 Manhattan at Belmont Park. That run was an unusual prep for what was his main task of the year - another crack at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Fretheim had always been keen to go back to Paris, having seen how close to fame his horse had come three years earlier. However, aged seven and by far the oldest runner in the field, and with Vasquez in the irons, Noble Dancer made no impact this time. Eased at the finish, he was unplaced behind Three Troikas.
Noble Dancer had already been syndicated for stallion duties. The 79 Arc became his last run, though not by design. Plans for a couple of starts late in the season were scapped when he suffered a serious injury during training over the dirt track at Belmont Park just ten days after his run in France. His left ankle was in a bad state and at first it was feared he would have to be put down. His sesamoids were displaced, and forced up into the cannon bone. With no support to the fetlock joint, his ankle was on the ground.
Dr William Reed, assisted by Dr Larry Bramlage from Ohio Univerity, whose expertise was crucial, worked hard on saving the turf champion’s life. The insurers thought the horse should be put down, arguing that he could not take the pain much longer. Haakon Fretheim was not looking for the money, though, insisting that they should try everything to save Noble Dancer.
“Money cannot replace him,” Fretheim said. “I would just like him to live.”
Did he try to end it all?
They did manage to save the horse, even from himself. Thomas Kelly later told the media that, on the second day of this critical week, Noble Dancer walked across to a water bucket and pushed his head under water. “I guess he just wanted to die that way. I got help, and we rushed in to get his head out of the water,” Kelly said.
“I suppose it is possible he was just trying to get relief from the pain, but I think he was trying to die quietly by himself because he definitely knew how very badly injured he was.”
The operation lasted six hours. The vets fixed the cannon bone to the pastern by inserting a stainless steel compression plate into his leg. Screw holes were drilled into the bone. Dr Reed later said that he had never come across bones as hard as Noble Dancer’s. “He had bones like steel. He is the toughest horse I ever worked on,” he said.
Less than an hour after the operation, Noble Dancer limped across the box to get a pick of hay. His calmness was probably just as important as the great work done by the vets.
The Piggott connection
Thoroughbred racing, especially in Norway, was of much better quality in the 70s than today, but even so no horse developed in Norway was ever likely to become a world-class performer. So, how did Noble Dancer end defy the odds?
Two names provide the answer: Terje Dahl and Lester Piggott.
Dahl was the undisputed top trainer in Scandinavia, and also a good jump jockey. Piggott and Dahl had become close friends when Dahl ventured across to the UK to ride in jump races. “They just bonded straight away when they met,” Dahl’s wife Ann recalls. “They were on the same wavelength, and Terje managed to get Piggott to come up here for some big races.”
Piggott did not ride Noble Dancer – despite having been instrumental in getting the horse to Norway. He advised Dahl to look at the colt, who was trained in England by Gordon Smyth as a 2-year-old. The colt was from a speedy family, and ran over six furlongs in all three juvenile starts. He made a winning debut at Kempton, ran second in the Washington Singer Stakes at Newbury then was disappointing when third in a minor event at Haydock.
After his third start, some observers felt that the tall son of Prince de Galles was not genuine, but Piggott was of a different opinion – and Dahl agreed. They both liked him and Dahl recommended that two of his main supporters, Gunnar Schjeldrup and Thor Heidang, partners racing horses under the name Stall Nero, should buy him. Susan Piggott brokered a deal, and Noble Dancer was thus purchased for £5,000 - by no means an astronomical sum, but expensive enough for a horse heading to Norway, where winning the Derby at the time was worth around £8,500.
The race that got away
Ironically, the Norwegian Derby (Norsk Derby) was one race that got away from Noble Dancer, as the filly Misty upset him in the classic. Eric Eldin rode him on that occasion and he was blamed for the defeat as he appeared to ease up when Misty came with her late dash to grab the spoils.
Noble Dancer made amends in the Oslo Cup, comfortably beating older horses, and he took that race also aged four, when defeating Trainer’s Seat, another quality Dahl trainee who was Scandinavia’s top 3-year-old the same year.
Noble Dancer’s run in the Arc some six weeks later impressed many onlookers. He was blocked by the rail at a crucial stage of the race and his fourth-place finish, just over five lengths behind Ivanjica, did not do him justice. Timeform wrote, “He would certainly have finished third had he not been hampered.” See video below.
His rider, Geoff Lewis, admitted after the race that he had underestimated Noble Dancer, and that he should have pulled the 66/1 shot around horses and out of trouble. So Noble Dancer, one of Thoroughbred racing’s more unlikely stars, twice suffered from pilot error in his long and illustrious career. Most of the other challenges thrown at him, he fought off with grit, determination, and a fair bit of style.
Haakon Fretheim, a Norwegian ship broker based in New York, had travelled to Paris for the Arc, and he immediately took an interest. Fretheim bought a 60 percent interest in the colt from Stall Nero.
After his good performance in the Arc, Noble Dancer earned a Timeform mark of 125, making him just 10lbs inferior Timeform’s 1976 Horse of the Year, Youth (owned like Exceller by U.S. oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt), who won the Washington D.C. International a month after the Arc. From a maiden win at two in England, to an unbeaten campaign as a 4-year-old in Norway, where he was twice voted Horse of The Year, Noble Dancer completed a career with 22 wins from 43 runs. His earnings were just shy of a million dollars.
Initially standing as a stallion at Pillar Stud and Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky, Noble Dancer later moved on to Canter II Farm in Morris, Illinois, and Ultima Farm in Madison, Wisconsin. He sired winners but was nowhere near as successful at stud as he had been on the track.
His life ended on June 27, 1994, after he suffered from a fracture while covering a mare.