The Colin Kelly-driven Girl Almighty ($9), trained by John Urbanski, held off the Brett Beckwith-reined Miss You Joann in the 14th and final race of the Friday, Jan. 16 card at The Meadowlands, giving Kelly the win in the race for nightly driving honours, beating Beckwith five victories to four. 

That win followed another narrow score by Kelly in rein to Always Be City ($6.20) over slight favourite Defamation and Beckwith in Friday's penultimate race for the Cameron Capone stable.

Kelly also had wins with Almost Karen ($10.60) for trainer Maria Reid, Chanceoflightning ($14.40) for Cory Stratton and Rock My Universe ($10.20) for Scott Blackler.

The Canadian reinsman, who relocated stateside last March, is coming off a personal-best year for earnings as he guided winners of $4.5 million in 2025 and topped the 200-win mark for the seventh time in his career.

Beckwith, last year's leading driver at Meadowlands, swept the Friday night features during his own multi-win night.

Super Duper Cooper hasn’t been all that popular with his friends lately, as the talented gelded son of E L Titan-Pink Power tasted defeat in each of his last two starts as the favourite heading into the co-featured $24,306 high-end conditioned trot.

Surprisingly, after his pair of failures at odds of 2-1, the five-year-old was bet down to 3-5, and rebounded with a superior effort to pick up his 13th victory from 54 lifetime starts.

“He raced great last week, it’s never easy to get stretched out to a :54.4 half,” said Beckwith of Super Duper Cooper, who finished second to Finite that night. “But he bounced back this week.”

Super Duper Cooper left the gate alertly from post six in the nine-horse field and sat a four-hole trip as Full Of Muscles (Kyle Symington) took the field past the quarter in :27.1 and half in :56.2. Super Duper Cooper vacated the rail at that point and started to make up ground racing uncovered on the rim, and actually surged past Full Of Muscles at three-quarters, which went in 1:26.

The Rico Robinson trainee was in high gear as he opened up an insurmountable edge on his foes in mid-stretch before cooling his jets somewhat nearing the wire, holding sway to a three-quarter-length win over a late-surging Interview Fra A (Johnathan Ahle). High Speed Swan (Kelly) was third in an impressive outing.

“As soon as he straightened up [in the stretch], he exploded home,” said Beckwith, who was mildly concerned that his horse had provided a live tow for Interview Fra A for the final half-mile. “In that group, all of them are talented animals. [Interview Fra A] was good, but mine dug in right to the wire.”

Super Duper Cooper paid $3.40 to win after completing the mile in 1:53, just a fifth of a second slower than his lifetime best.

A career winner of more than $570,000, he is currently owned by Pollack Racing of Venetia, Pennsylvania.

In another $24,306 conditioned trot on the card, Beckwith also drove the Per Engblom trainee Zenmeister S ($4.80) to a 1:54.3 victory in the trotter's North American debut. The five-year-old Perfect Spirit-Zsa Zsa Kronos gelding, who had five prior wins from 25 starts in Sweden, is owned by Order By Stable of Boras, Sweden.

Engblom topped all trainers on Friday at Big M with two walks down victory lane. 

A modest $1,380 carryover led to a total pool of just under $10,000 in the 20-cent Pick-6, and after a sequence where winners' odds were 3-5, 5-1, 4-1, 2-1, 7-5 and 2-1, those with winning tickets collected $1,838.18.

All-source betting on the 14-race program totalled $2,871,649.

Racing resumes at Meadowlands on Saturday at 6:20 p.m. This week is the second of four when racing will be conducted on Sunday. Post time on Sunday is 12:30 p.m.  

(With files from Meadowlands Racetrack; photo of Colin Kelly from a 2024 win at Grand River Raceway)