Patience is a winner-now six times over!

Horsham harness racing trainer-driver Aaron Dunn is a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, but there’s added relief written all over his face at the moment.

To say it’s been a long road with his impressive four-year-old gelding Eyethink (Sunshine Beach) is something of an understatement.

“It’s certainly been a lot of work and slow rehab. My dad (Barry) did most of this, so he deserves much of the credit,” Dunn said.

Eyethink was a most impressive winner at Kilmore last Saturday night (July 15) in a heat of the Ken “Snowy” Chapman Memorial Winter Championship.  He now heads to Melton this Saturday to compete in the $30,000 final.

The gelding has put together a solid campaign this season. From his past 14 starts he’s recorded six wins and four runner-up performances including a narrow defeat in the APG Gold Bullion 4YO final at Melton.

Dunn said the horse had shown plenty of promise after being purchased from the APG yearling sales.

“He won on debut at Ballarat in a two-year-old race and then followed up with a strong third at Terang,” Dunn said.

“He went a tick over 1.56 at his first start. So then when we were faced with a few major setbacks, there was never any doubt about him being worth persevering with,” he said.

Eyethink’s impressive debut runs were back in April 22 and May 4 of 2021 and the pacer wasn’t sighted at the track again until December last year.

“I’d picked out some nice races for him, including an APG heat, when he went amiss. We’d worked him and went to take him to the wash and he could hardly walk. We found out he’d done a suspensory,” Dunn said.

“His rehabilitation included heaps of walking and then slow jogging. I’ve now got a walking machine and that would have been handy back then!”

After getting the green light to resume his normal training routine, Eyethink later performed nicely in two trials and looked on track.

But disappointment again struck when the horse was found to have a hairline fracture in a back pastern.

“So, we took him down to the vets in Ballarat again and he ended up having three screws put in. I think it was a bit later that I then decided to have him gelded,” Dunn said.

“I reckon he probably got scanned about five or six times over the next 12 months to make sure everything was okay.”

Eyethink finally returned to the racetrack 19 months after his first injury and the strong-going pacer has certainly vindicated the faith of the Dunn camp with some exciting victories on the comeback trail.

Dunn said he would be hoping to use his gate speed from barrier three in Saturday’s final.

“He did well at Kilmore when he got to the front because he copped a bit of pressure. I’ll probably give him one more run and then ease up before tackling the VicBred heats later next month,” he said.

Dunn’s property on the outskirts of Horsham now boasts a new 1350m track, with a 3.7m uphill rise and the modifications haven’t done the team’s seasonal results any harm at all.

Dunn is in the top bracket for both trainer and driver percentages – 64 percent as a trainer (16 wins and 20 placings from 56 starters) and 57 percent as a driver (13 wins and 16 placings from 51 drives).

“It’s made things a lot easier because before I was taking them into the Horsham track to do fastwork. I’ve got a great team of workers and at the moment we’re doing 18 horses, with half of these being unraced two-year-olds and yearlings.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink