MR POPULARITY: TAKE ALL COMERS A REAL FAVORITE
Take All Comers might not always be a favorite on the tote board, but around trainer Jim Campbell’s stable and on the racetrack with his drivers, he certainly enjoys that status ...
HIGHTSTOWN, NJ -- January 22, 2025 -- Take All Comers might not always be a favorite on the tote board, but around trainer Jim Campbell’s stable and on the racetrack with his drivers, he certainly enjoys that status.
An 8-year-old male trotter bred and owned by Scott Farber’s Runthetable Stables, Take All Comers has competed at the sport’s upper levels throughout a career that’s seen him win 24 races and earn more than $1.22 million.
On Friday at the Meadowlands, Take All Comers will make his 2026 debut against seven rivals in the night’s featured $25,000 trot. He will leave from post five with Colin Kelly in the sulky and is the 5-2 morning-line favorite.
Take All Comers prepped for the start with a 1:54.4 victory in a qualifier on Jan. 17 at the Big M, also with Kelly at the lines. The gelding closed his 2025 campaign by posting two wins and a second in preliminary rounds of the MGM Grand Prix Trotting Series at Yonkers before a fourth-place finish from the second tier in the event’s $250,000 final on Dec. 19.
“I was very pleased with the way he finished the year,” Campbell said. “He was really strong in those three legs and the final at Yonkers; he raced very good. It was a tough race in the final, but I was very happy with the way he raced.
“He got off to a little bit of a slow start for us last year (with one win in five summertime starts). He had some allergies that were bothering him in the beginning, and once we got that cleared up he came back to his old self.”
Take All Comers didn’t have the best of luck with the draws in his three biggest starts of last year – leaving from post 10 in the $350,000 FanDuel Open Trot Championship and second tier in the $300,000 John Cashman Memorial, both at the Meadowlands, along with the aforementioned second-tier spot at Yonkers. Still, he ended 2025 with eight top-three finishes, including four victories, and $143,435 in purses in 14 starts. He has never made less in any of his other five seasons on the racetrack, as he’s totaled 50 on-the-board finishes and earned 65 paychecks in 80 lifetime appearances.
He won the 2024 final of the MGM Grand Prix Trotting Series and scored on the Grand Circuit in a division of the Bluegrass Stakes in 2020. He finished second in the 2022 Graduate Series final and the 2023 Caesars Trotting Classic and was third in the 2021 Earl Beal Jr. Memorial and two editions of the Bob Miecuna Invitational Trot (2023 and 2024).
Other earned paydays over the years have included two Breeders Crown finals (2020 and 2023), the 2021 Hambletonian, 2022 Hambletonian Maturity, and 2023 FanDuel Open Trot Championship.
“He’s just a really cool horse to be around,” Campbell said. “He’s just got a distinct personality about him. He’s one of those horses that when you walk in the barn he’s got his head out and is waiting for you. Anybody that’s been around him loves him. Whether it’s a groom, vet, drivers – the drivers all love him because he’s a really nice horse to drive.
“Scott Farber always says that he’s his favorite horse of all time. He loves the way the horse has performed for him and really has a special attraction to the horse. He’s raced in stakes races every year of his life, which is kind of an amazing feat. When you send him out there he gives you everything he’s got no matter what the race is. That’s the way he’s been ever since he started racing. And he’s the type of horse that knows when he’s going to race, too. He loves to race.”
Take All Comers has averaged 13 races per year during his career and never started more than 16 times in a single season. It’s a schedule that has helped the gelding succeed.
“A lot of that has been by design,” Campbell said. “In an ideal world, he races the best if you can race him every other week. He really thrives on that.”
And what is in store for Take All Comers this year as he looks for a seventh consecutive $100,000-plus season?
“We’ll play it by ear with him,” Campbell said. “As long as everything is good, he’ll probably race maybe up until May, or something like that, and then we’ll give him a break. If Yonkers has that series again in the fall, we would get him ready again for that. He really seems to like the cooler weather better.”
Racing begins at 6:20 p.m. (ET) at the Meadowlands. For free TrackMaster past performances for the Big M, click here.
