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Jockey Robert Strauss, who rode Go Man Go.
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SPEEDHORSE May 2023
“He was difficult to handle from the day of his birth. By the time he was a weanling, he was an all-out rebel.”
The roan colt had the right
name, first yelled in astonishment by
Robert Strauss the first time he let him run full
out in a workout. “Go, man, go!” he cried,
leaving his rival behind in a trail of dust.
Speedhorse Archives
he loved more than anything was betting on his horses. And while Ferguson was blessed with good
judgment concerning horses, his real blessing was the Strauss family he employed. Older brother Eldridge
served as his trainer while brothers William, Robert and Richard Strauss competed as jockeys and sister Mercille worked as a stable
hand. It was their combined talents which channeled the energies of a rambunctious, hard-twisted colt
into a racing phenomenon. Sometime in the late 1940s,
J.B. Ferguson was attending the match races at Ville Platte, Louisiana, when a certain filly
caught his eye. He negotiated a price and bought the filly. Then, thinking of the narrow roads
he would have to drive on the
way home to Texas and knowing that his two-horse trailer pulled much better when it was equally loaded, he asked the seller if he had another, cheaper horse he could buy to level his load. The man offered a mare who had had her hip knocked down for $300. Ferguson agreed and thus became the owner of Lightfoot Sis.
In 1953, to the cover of Top Deck TB, Lightfoot Sis foaled a colt with a blaze
face, roan hairs scattered heavily through his flanks and a cluster of white hairs surrounding the base of his tail. He was difficult to handle from the day of his birth. By the time he was a weanling, he was an all-out rebel.
“I heard an awful commotion over behind the barn one day and went over and saw they had that colt hog-tied down on the ground and were about to cut him,” recalled Ferguson. “I told them to let him up. That mare’s first two colts had been runners. I had a feeling this one would be, too.”
Breaking the colt to the saddle was overseen by master horseman Eldridge Strauss and required the full complement of his younger brothers, for it was only by rotating riders that Eldridge could keep their spirits up. However, when they finally got the roan colt to sprint without bucking, Strauss knew they had something special. So special, in fact, that he would recommend to Ferguson that they not waste him on the hard dirt tracks of Louisiana or South Texas. Strauss knew better than to be mistaken in his judgment. He knew Ferguson would bet a fortune on his assessment. But Strauss was confident when he strode into Ferguson’s office and told him they could take this colt anywhere and expect to win.
And the roan colt had the right name.
A name that had first been yelled out
in astonishment by Robert Strauss the
first time he let the colt run full out in a competitive workout. “Go, man, go!” he cried, and go he did, leaving his rival behind in a trail of dust. And when he finally got
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