Background and Early Life
Go Man Go was foaled in Wharton, Texas in 1953, as a result of the second breeding between the Thoroughbred stallion Top Deck and the Appendix Quarter Horse mare Lightfoot Sis. Top Deck was bred by the King Ranch, and was unraced. J. B. Ferguson had purchased Lightfoot Sis when her then-owner, Octave Fontenot of Prairie Ronde, Louisiana, decided to get out of the horse breeding business. Ferguson paid $350 for her (approximately $3,100 as of 2013) and bred her in 1952 to Top Deck (TB), resulting in Go Man Go's birth the next year. Ferguson also purchased Top Deck, after the stallion injured himself as a yearling.
Lightfoot Sis showed classic short speed in her pedigree, although she was unraced due to an injury as a filly that left her blind in one eye. Her sire was the Thoroughbred stallion Very Wise, and her dam was a Quarter Horse mare named Clear Track.
Scott Wells, a racing correspondent, wrote in The Speedhorse Magazine that Go Man Go "grew up lean and hard-boned, long-bodied and long-hipped, but not the best looking horse in the world. Not the best looking, just the best." Go Man Go had a reputation for being difficult to handle. His trainer once told Walt Wiggins, Sr. that Go Man Go was "jes plain mean as a bear most of the time". Throughout his racing career, Go Man Go stayed mean. One of his jockeys, Robert Strauss, recalled later that Go Man Go "was ornery from the day I met him, but he was the greatest horse I ever rode".
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