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 colt 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 colt and the world champion racing Quarter Horse.
He earned $72,125 on seven tracks as a 2-year-old and five tracks as a 3-year-old. Of 36 races, he won 22, was second in 10 and was third in one. His last race was in 1958 at Los Alamitos.
After Mr Bar None left the track, it was other horse owners loading up their mares and driving to Wagoner to the court of Mr Bar None. Mr Bar None’s foals earned $1.157 million on the track.
Mr Bar None developed degeneration of the spine, and on a cold, rainy day in February 1982, he was euthanized. The stallion was buried at the Jeffers family ranch near Wagoner, where a statue of him looks out across a mare band to mark his grave.
Mr Bar None was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2014.
Biography updated as of March 2014.