The junior drivers’ premiership will go to the wire, though, with Carter Dalgety and Wilson House battling for the title and both driving at today’s twilight meeting, but with House now favourite for that title.
But another, less official, title could be won tonight, that of the biggest stakes-earning stable for the season, with Robert and Jenna Dunn just $6000 behind Team Telfer heading to Alexandra Park.
Neither have super strong teams in today but if Team Dunn are to win the stakes premiership, their best chance will come from their growing strength: trotting power.
Robert Dunn has been one of New Zealand’s most talented trainers for over 40 years and trained his 2200th domestic winner on Monday, but it is only in the last decade hthat e has excelled with trotters, headlined by the brilliant Sundees Son.
Since that marvel stomped over the New Zealand trotting scene for three wonderful seasons a few years ago, the Dunns’ trotting stocks have continued to strengthen.
They head into today on 109 wins for the season, 44 of those coming with trotters, a record for Robert and Jenna’s partnership or any other version of the Dunn dynasty over the decades.
That makes them our second-most successful stable in trotting races this season, 10 behind Michelle Wallis and Bernie Hackett, who almost exclusively train trotters and have 54 trotting wins.
If Team Dunn is to top the prizemoney table for the season, it will have to come through Mighty Logan, or less likely stablemate Ya Right Darl, in the $100,000 National Trot.
“We love having so many good trotters and this looks an ideal race for Mighty Logan,” says John Dunn, the stable’s No 1 driver and unofficial third training partner.
“He has been going great races and gets the draw to lead this time and he will take a lot of beating.”
John admits three-year-old filly Ya Rite Darl’s entry against many of our open-class stars tonight is a “throw at the stumps”, but with nothing to lose.
“She is up here, in good form and she will end up racing these horses at some stage next season so she might as well go around and see where she stands.”
Ya Rite Darl will be driven by John and Jenna’s son Jacob, one of the finds of the 2025 season, and while it hard to see how she can win tonight, her performance could be a pointer to the future of open-class trotting as some of our wonderful veterans near the end of their careers.
If either of that pair win tonight, the Dunns should end 2025 as our highest money-winning stable.
While the enigmatic Oscar Bonavena is an obvious danger in the National, another newcomer to the open ranks, Hillbilly Blues, could test Mighty Logan because while he is still a work in progress, he has the motor of a top trotter.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
