Trots Centre: This Lad seems to be getting better with age

A severe setback as a three-year-old hasn’t quashed the guts and determination of the Barker family’s “superstar” Creative Lad, who just continues to shine as he moves into the twilight of his career.

The 137-start veteran’s journey has been a rocky one, with a mystery issue in his early years initially treated as an infection before shockingly revealed as a broken leg.

“The vet didn’t even know it was broken originally,” regular driver Jackie Barker said.

“Then he wasn’t getting any better so we took him to a different vet to get a different opinion, and they said his leg was broken clean in half… in his front leg, the smaller bone that runs along their tendon.

“So, then we had to have surgery done and they actually took the bone out that was broken. They thought he probably had a 90 per cent success rate of recovering, which he did.”

Like most things the Barkers do, they do it together. Creative Lad – a son of Artistic Fella - was bought at the yearling sales, then broken in by Jackie’s father Rod and is trained by her grandfather Jim.

And the family has enjoyed the ride along with the horse’s owner, Clarence Hamilton.

“He’s not a superstar, but he’s a superstar to us,” Jackie said of the 11-time winner.

“The fella that owns him has been an owner with Dad and Pop for a long, long time now. He’s always bought a horse or two at the yearling sales and he’s never had anything good. The majority of them have never even raced, so this is the only one that has actually been any good for him. So we are really pleased and he gets a thrill out of it too.

“Probably the last couple of years, he’s really come into form. He seems to be a lot stronger and he really wants to race now – he just tries really hard. He’s probably tougher than he is fast, but he’s put up some really good performances lately.”

One of those efforts Barker speaks of was the win in a heat of the Northern Region Championship at Ouyen last weekend. The seven-year-old sat parked outside the leader for almost all of the entire 2040m trip, but toughed it out to win by close to 2m.

It was a great performance and one that was declared a “career best by a mile” by caller Luke Humphreys.

“We weren’t even really considering the possibility of running in the $25,000 final. We were just going in that race, but then when he won, we thought we’d better go and give it a shout up at Mildura and see how we go,” Jackie said.

Creative Lad will go around in the second round of heats at Mildura this evening, with a bold showing likely to book him a place in the lucrative final at Swan Hill on September 30.

In all, three rounds of heats will be conducted at tonight’s meeting in the Sunraysia, with a points-based system used to decide which of those runners reach the decider.

After a stellar effort at Kilmore last night, Humphreys will call the meeting, with the TrotsVision coverage to kick-off shortly before the first event at 5.34pm.