09/10/2019
Oscar “June” Jeffers Jr. had an eye for speed, and his wife, Zelma, had a knack for crossing the right bloodlines. Together, they created an explosive, record-breaking racehorse.
In 1955, June and Zelma saw their breeding vision arrive when a spindly legged c**t was foaled. Mr Bar None, as they called him, was a dark chestnut with a vivid white star and strip down his face that would show through his racing silks as his head burst out in front of many a racing finish line.
“Mr Bar None was lazy, and our grandparents had done all this master planning with breeding Murl L to Three Bars, and they thought it was all going to be for nothing. They were even thinking of selling him, but Grandpa knew of a jockey named Tecumseh Stark,” says Dalinda Jeffers of Bixby, Oklahoma, one of Zelma and June’s granddaughters.
“Starkey” knew how to get the best out of Mr Bar None. However, the late Kenneth Chapman was Bar None’s jockey for every race but one, and Bar None finished the 1958 race season as the AQHA racing champion stallion, the AQHA racing champion 3-year-old c**t and the world champion racing Quarter Horse.
Mr Bar None was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2014.
To learn more about Mr Bar None and other Hall of Fame Inductees, please visit aqha.com/foundation.
Biography updated as of March 2014.
