10 horses in work – eight in Group 1 finals

Four years ago Aaron Dunn decided to get serious about harness racing and the results are on show for all to see at Friday night’s stellar Vicbred finals at Melton.

The popular 50-year-old Horsham horseman has been driving for 21 years and is already enjoying by far his most successful season with 48 wins and 73 placings from his 240 drives – that’s a touch better than a 50 per cent strike rate of finishing top three.

But, way beyond the quantity of his success comes the quality, led by stable stars like Bondi Lockdown, Silent Major and Flash Jimmy.

Almost unbelievably, from a team of just 10 in work, Dunn had eight runners in the Vicbred semi-finals and qualified five of them for Friday night’s finals: Mykorona (2YO pacing fillies), Bondi Lockdown (3YO pacing colts and geldings), Silent Major (4YO pacing entires and geldings) as well as Flash Jimmy and Hot Deal (2YO pacing colts and geldings).

The enormity of the achievement shines through when you consider Dunn’s driven in just 16 Group 1 races in his 25-year career so far. Friday night he adds another four.

Dunn, 50, has tasted Group 1 success before with his former top young pacer Dee Dees Dream. Fittingly, that was in the Vicbred 2YO pacing final back in 2002. He raced on to win 38 races and bank more than $412,000 back in the mid-2000s.

He won his second Group 1 with Bondi Lockdown in the VHRC Caduceus Classic earlier this year.

“I never thought I’d get another horse as good as Dee Dees Dream, but when Bondi Lockdown came along I started to get excited,” he said. “He had X-factor from the day he was broken in.”

While Dee Dees Dream was a bit of a natural, Bondi Lockdown has been a raw diamond, or in horseman terms, a “work in progress.”

“He’s certainly has his quirks and may have them forever, but we’ve worked through them and he’s something special. I think he’s a Grand Circuit horse in the making.”

It’s all come together at the right time for this final. His semi-final win, from off the pace in a scorching 1:53.5 mile rate for 2240m, was something to behold.

“He broke the track record at home by two seconds going into it and pulled up with a heart rate of 77 (very low), so that sort of gave me the confidence he was on song,” Dunn said after the sparkling display.

Dunn fell in love with harness racing through his father, Barry, but was always more focused on his mobile seed cleaning business until four years ago.

“I hadn’t been to the yearling sales for 11 years, but decided to give things a proper crack and buy some nicely bred horses to race and breed from. It’s happened quicker than I expected,” he said.

“I’ve had over 90 winners in the past two seasons from only a small team of eight or 10 in work.

“It’s just Steve Blacker and I who work them. I couldn’t do it without him because there’s much work and travel involved, especially with us based at Horsham.”

All 12 races of Vicbred night are Group 1 finals, starting at 5.27pm.

The star attraction is champion three-year-old filly Ladies In Red’s quest for a 17th win from just 20 starts in the 3YO fillies final, which is race six at 7.59pm.

Click here to view the fields.

By Adam Hamilton