And when the big son of Courage Under Fire did something not many have been able to do in recent months, and run past a Mark Purdon and Natalie Rasmussen runner inside the final 100 metres, he pushed his credentials for next weekend’s Group One Easter Cup.
His win in the feature free-for-all pacing event of the night, a race formerly known as the Alan Mattson FFA was quite special and only served to show that at the elite level, you have to be bang on top of your game if you’re going to win against other quality horses.
And that’s exactly what Robert and John Dunn had in Alta Orlando.
He’d shown a week earlier after muffing the score-up and being a right little princess only to finish a huge third behind Funatthebeach, that he was closing in on something special and when he started with the field on Friday night he was never not going to be competitive.
“That’s half the problem with him, it always has been,” John Dunn has said previously.
“If he scores up and is in the right mood, he’s a very good horse.”
Good enough to be rated as the leading contender for his former stable of the All Stars in the 2014 Sires’ Stakes Final, Alta Orlando was struck down with injury before given a second chance by the Dunn team and a new ownership group.
John’s wife Jenna, his father Robert along with Mitzi Taylor and Margaret Evans all race in the ownership of the now six-year-old, who has won seven of 33 and more than $200,000 in stakes.
He wore down More The Better, who sat parked outside a rolling AG’S White Socks, to claim the victory.
Meanwhile, another superstar of the age group ranks got back his winning groove last night when Speeding Spur run his rivals off their feet inside the final 800 metres to win the feature trot.
The John and Joshua Dickie-trained trotter worked his way to the lead at the one-mile marker before hitting the afterburners 800 metres later to score impressively from a closing Harriet Of Mot and brave Le Leivre’s Gift, who led early then trailed.
It’s the first time Speeding Spur has won at Addington since 2015, when he won both the Trotting Derby and the Yearling Sales Series Final.
