It’s a Big M debut for Call Me Goo

Call Me Goo (Googoo Gaagaa-Callmemza) spent her formative years racing in the Maryland Sire Stakes, but after winning five times last year on the Grand Circuit and opening this harness racing season by erasing a 21-year-old track record at Rosecroft Raceway, it is easy to see why her connections are excited about discovering the 4-year-old female trotter’s full potential.

On Saturday, Call Me Goo will visit The Meadowlands for the first time in her career to compete in the first round of the Miss Versatility Series for trotting mares. She heads to the race having hit the board in 23 of 24 career starts, winning 17.

In her only race this year, Call Me Goo won a Maryland Sire Stakes event for 4- and 5-year-old trotters (female and male) by 6-1/4 lengths in 1:54.2 at Rosecroft. Her time shattered the previous track record for 4-year-old trotting mares, set by Wind Glider in 2003, by a full second. Tim Tetrick guided Call Me Goo to victory in that race and will be in the sulky again for trainer Jason Skinner in the Miss Versatility.

“She’s purely professional,” said Adam Ainspan, who owns Call Me Goo with his wife, Mary Beth Roberts, under the Graham Grace Stables moniker, which combines the middle names of his two children. “Even in the barn, you can tell she’s different. Nothing fazes her. On the track, she just goes out and does her business. But her best qualities are her athletic attributes above and beyond that.

“I think she has a champions character and demeanor, along with the athletic ability. You don’t really get that too often, so we’re just really lucky.”

Call Me Goo, bred by William “Bib” Roberts, won a Maryland Sire Stakes title at Rosecroft as a 2-year-old and swept the finals at Rosecroft and Ocean Downs last season at 3. She then headed to Canada and got her first Grand Circuit victory by defeating O’Brien Award winner Righteous Resolve by 2-3/4 lengths in 1:52.2 in a division of the Casual Breeze Stakes at Woodbine Mohawk Park.

“They started telling me when she was 2 that she had potential, but you never know how that’s going to go,” Ainspan said. “But you started to see it when she started to race as a 2-year-old. As a 3-year-old, everything up to that point was in Maryland, and she was competing and winning pretty easily.

“It became clearer what we had when we took her up to Woodbine Mohawk. Her first race there, she won really impressively. We didn’t know what we had until then because she never had to go that fast in Maryland. At that point, I was kind of getting the idea she was something special.”

Following a ninth-place finish from post nine in the final of the Elegantimage Stakes at Mohawk, Call Me Goo closed out 2023 with four wins and a second, all in Grand Circuit races, capped by her victory in the Matron Stakes at Bally’s Dover.

“She had a little trouble just for a few weeks with a splint while in Canada, but otherwise she was pretty much good the whole time,” Ainspan said. “She’s improved a lot from (ages) 3 to 4; I think her gait is even smoother this year. She looks the part, but in this business, you never know what’s going to happen.”

Call Me Goo is the 2-1 second choice on the morning line in Saturday’s Miss Versatility. Tactical Mounds is the 3-2 favorite in the field of five.

In addition to the Miss Versatility, Call Me Goo is eligible to many major stakes, including the Graduate Series, Armbro Flight, Hambletonian Maturity, Six Pack, Steele Memorial, and Dayton Oaks.

“At this point, she’s been one of the more special ones I’ve ever had,” said Ainspan, a small animal veterinarian who has been in the sport as an owner for two decades and raced Callmemza’s speedy-but-mercurial sire, Great George Two. “It will be a lot of fun to see what happens this year.”

Racing begins at 6:20 p.m. (EDT) at The Meadowlands. For free TrackMaster programs for the Big M, click here.

by Ken Weingartner, for the USTA