Peter Snowden is undoubtedly one of Australia’s best trainers and can pick a good race horse from a mile away but even he didn’t expect to see what he’s found in Beaded.

Of course she’s over shadowed, like every other horse, by Black Caviar this year but rest assured she’s won over plenty of fans.

“She’s one of the very specials ones, a no frills horse that gives you a big buzz,” Snowden said.

“With mares like Beaded you don’t expect anything and when you raise the bar they keep stepping higher and higher and higher and she’s about 15 hands, she’s a pony and always runs out of her skin.”

To show just how much Snowden originally expected of her, he recounted his words after she won a Listed race in Hawkesbury in 2009.

“My words that day were ‘we’re looking for black type, we won it, we’ve got it that will do us’,” he said.

It’s been a whirlwind journey form there though and this weekend she’ll bring an amazingly consistent career record into her fifth attempt at a Group 1 level.

“She’s only finished out of a place once in her life, in a Stradbroke, when she got beat half a length from barrier 20.

“I never thought she’d ever measure up to Group I company and she’s done it four times now and ran out of her skin each time.”

Whilst she was expectedly beaten comfortably by Black Caviar last start in the Newmarket Handicap, it was the manner of her third place which impressed Snowden.

“At the furlong she was flat and there was nothing left but she refused to lay down and chased as hard as she could,” he said.

“Craig Newitt who rode her said afterwards, ‘You’d swear she had it in her mind she can’t win but I’m going to run second because she kept persisting in trying to beat the horse [Crystal Lily] beside her. Ears back and came back filthy she didn’t beat it’.

“She’s absolutely as tough as you get racehorses.”