Roads less travelled – Peter Robl’s unorthodox search for winners

Peter Robl made a name for himself as a dedicated jockey willing to put in the long hours of travel to ride a winner. It’s an approach to racing that is also serving him well as a lateral-thinking trainer.

The tyranny of distance is shaping Peter Robl’s second career in racing as a trainer in much the same way it did when he emerged as the quintessential bush jockey.

As an accomplished rider based out of regional Victoria, Robl spent countless hours on the road forging a reputation for horsemanship and winning. He rode at 98 different tracks in the final 15 years of his career, covering every state and territory apart from Tasmania. 

Now it is his horses who are doing the hard yards, thanks to some of the more creative pieces of placement devised by a small-scale stable.

Robl has scattered some of the higher-profile members of his Gold Coast team from the bottom of mainland Australia to the top, chasing opportunities that don’t exist closer to home.

There’s nothing random about this length-and-breadth search for a race. 

No-nonsense filly Overfull turns up in Adelaide on Saturday, trying to sneak a black-type win that has been elusive during her second season of racing when she contests the Lightning Stakes at Morphettville.

In the tropics, there is a familiarity to Hadouken’s Northern Territory excursion that is aimed at winning the Darwin Cup for the second year in a row when the $200,000 race is run on Monday week.

While the logistics might seem daunting, Robl’s says the reasoning is simple.

“You’ve got to go where you can try to win a race, don’t you? So I’ve got horses all over the joint at the moment,” Robl told The Straight.

“I sent Overfull down there to Adelaide because I know she travels so well. And look, that’s her last chance of getting some black-type beside her name as a three-year-old filly. So, that’s why she’s down there.”

Overshare filly Overfull cost $14,000 as a VOBIS Gold Yearling Sale graduate, catching the eye of Ross Lao, who, along with business partner Andy Lau, created Upper Bloodstock.

They have been in the news this season after selling Angel Capital to Yulong and are an important cog in Robl’s stable after luring the trainer to Queensland from Randwick following the purchase of a Gold Coast stables complex in 2023.

“I trained for them a bit when I was in Sydney,” Robl said.

“They don’t have a lot of runners in Australia. Their main business model is to buy and trade into Hong Kong.

“So anything with good ability basically goes to Hong Kong. But they buy a few fillies to race in Australia and Overfull fitted that mould in that she looked like she’d get running.”

Overfull goes all the way and hangs on to take out the 5th race at Scone. @rubba0711 pic.twitter.com/K4LiOxY0K7

— SKY Racing (@SkyRacingAU) May 17, 2024

Overfull has won three races and more than $370,000 stakes, having already campaigned in Queensland, NSW and Victoria this season.

“She’s as tough as oak and more importantly, she travels well,” Robl said.

“And she’s certainly become a bargain buy, but she deserves to get some black-type alongside her name for what she’s done over the past two seasons.”

In his early riding days, Robl dominated the ranks of the racing associations attached to the NSW-Victoria border region until he caught the eye of veteran Warwick Farm trainer Clarry Conners.

At 36, Sydney called. Robl answered the challenge with a seamless transition to the metropolitan weighing room.

Landing a Group 1 win for Anthony Cummings in 2008 created a pathway as a go-to jockey for Nathan Tinkler’s Patinack Farm operation.

There were setbacks. A broken vertebra left him sidelined for months and a betting scandal could have easily ended his career when he was disqualified for a year.

But he always returned as if he had never been away before doctors told him that injuries sustained when he was unseated from a horse at Scone during the 2013/14 season meant that riding in races was no longer an option.

Robl deals with residual neck pain from that fall but he rides the odd one in trackwork and veteran trainer Les Bridge singled him for special mention as he prepared Classique Legend ahead of the sprinter’s Everest win in 2020

It’s that ongoing connection with the horse that will ensure Robl will be in Darwin next week, in what is becoming an annual pilgrimage to put the finishing touches on his team for the Territory’s biggest meeting of the year.

Hadouken and stablemate Zourata have been on the road since March, making their way to Darwin via the Alice Springs Cup carnival.

Zourata has more than paid his way with three wins to be one of the form horses going into the Palmerston Sprint and Hadouken has come good at the right time with a Chief Minister’s Cup victory.

“It’s the Darwin Cup carnival. There’s nothing like it, and I’ve had a bit of luck up there. Not as a jockey but as a trainer,” he said.

“The prize money is good and I’ve got a few owners from up there.”

Robl will be in his element but the 53-year-old is also looking for new frontiers.

“I might try – if I can organise it – to slide Hadouken across to Broome because the Broome Cup’s run 12 days after the Darwin Cup,” he said, making the 2000km journey sound like a drive around a suburban block.

“Just getting across there would be the hard part because it’s not like you’ve got horse floats going back and forth to Broome from Darwin all the time.

“But you can’t beat a carnival, mate. Can’t beat a carnival.”