AN UP-AND-DOWN few months for trainer John Meade and Bendigo driver Chris Svanosio with star trotter Sparkling Success has ended with a horse of the year award.

The seven-year-old gelding, who was to represent Australia in the lucrative $1.3 million Yonkers International Trot in New York City earlier this month before succumbing to a suspensory ligament injury, was named the top aged trotting entire or gelding at Sunday’s Gordon Rothacker Medal night in Melbourne.

Sparkling Success provided Svanosio with his first ever Group 1 win in the 2018 Maori Mile at Bendigo in January.

The horse and driver combination added a second Group 1 win three weeks later in the Great Southern Star at Melton and Group 2 and 3 wins, also at Melton, in August and September.

It was following the second of those wins in the Maori’s Idol Free For All the gelding was diagnosed with his injury.

Svanosio previously told the Advertiser in September that Sparkling Success was the best trotter he had driven.

Meade, who is based at Cudgee, near Warrnambool, said there was no doubt his horse was ‘special’.

“He’s a horse that you don’t even dream about,” he said.

“Like, I’ve trained horses now for a fair while and my father in law had horses all his life, and you just hope you get a nice horse, but you know, Peter Craven said, “oh he’s a nice horse” and I said “oh he’s all right”, I didn’t think he was as good as he is.

“He just keeps on trying the little fella.

“Chris (Svanosio) will tell you how good he is.

“When you can run a mile race in Bendigo like he did and sit parked and coast to the line running and Australian record, how good is he?

“I don’t know… I just wanted to take him to America to put Australian trotting on the map, but that didn’t happen.”

Meade was philosophical when talking about not being able to take Sparkling Success to the United States.

“You have to put it into perspective a bit… he’s just a horse,” Meade said.

“Everyone here in this whole joint, they’ve got mates and friends who have had cancer or have lost somebody… this horse is special to me and our family… but you have to put it into perspective.

“He’ll be back.”

Sparkling Success has won 17 of his 37 starts and been placed 14 times for stakes earnings of $420,170.