by Ellen Harvey, Harness Racing Communications

East Rutherford, NJ — That’snotmyname will have her name written in the books as the winner of the $437,000 Hanover Shoe Farms Merrie Annabelle for 2-year-old trotting fillies on Saturday afternoon (August 7) at the Meadowlands.

USTA/Mark Hall photo

That’snotmyname won the $437,000 Hanover Shoe Farms Merrie Annabelle for 2-year-old trotting fillies.

The victory came in a career best time of 1:55, for a stakes and track record. That’snotmyname is owned by Order By Stable and trained by Jimmy Takter.

That’snotmyname, driven by John Campbell, inherited the lead just after the :28.2 quarter-mile mark when the leader Grace Marie (George Brennan) made a break while That’snotmyname was trotting toward the lead on the outside.

They held that to the :57.4 half and on to the 1:26.3 three-quarters, with Crème De Cocoa trailing her. There were no serious challengers in the stretch and the 1:55 win came with a 1-1/4 length margin of victory. Crème De Cocoa (D.R. Ackerman) was second and Fitness Girl (Tim Tetrick) was third.

“She’s got a lot of talent, a great set of lungs, she doesn’t seem to get tired. She goes down to the wire every time we’ve asked her to,” said driver John Campbell. “She was a little rocky, she had been last week and this week I had to be a little careful with her. But she keeps trying to go forward, that’s the main thing, that they want to go to the wire like she does.”

The victory was John Campbell’s seventh Merrie Annabelle, but the first for trainer Jimmy Takter.

“We’ve been second 9, 10, 11 times, something like that. I don’t know, I can’t keep track,” he laughed. “This is the race I really wanted to win, it was one of the races left for me to win.”