Page 42 - August 2022

The Stuffff Dreams
Are Made Of
With just one broodmare, Jim & Donna O’Neal
produced a Million-Dollar Winner
Nby Diane Rice
early 40 years ago, Jim O’Neal
followed his horse-loving heart
from Detroit, Michigan, and many other cities in the U.S., to the
Oklahoma City suburb of Jones to build a horse ranch.
Once there, he met and married Donna Becker, now his wife of 35 years. Along the way Jim trained, and the couple bred and raced their way up the ranks, reaching their pinnacle thus far when Jess Savin Candy was foaled in 2019 and earned AQHA’s Champion 2 Year Old and Champion 2-Year-Old Gelding racing titles.
The talented bay gelding, by Jess Good Candy and out of the Pappasito mare Savin Grace - Jim and Donna’s only broodmare at the time-finished his freshman year third by earnings and missed by just 1/4 of a second being just the second horse ever to win the All American Triple Crown after finishing the All American Futurity fourth by 1 1/4-lengths. As of press time he has earned $1,051,160 including his Ruidoso Derby trial in May for owners Dutch Masters III.
“Breeding a horse to make over $1 million and only having one mare — you can’t make this up and have it be any better. That’s just “Casey’s Shadow” stuff right there,” says the O’Neals’ friend and Hall of Fame jockey G.R. Carter, referencing
the 1978 Columbia Pictures movie
starring Walter Matthau. “The odds are just astronomical. It’s truly the kind of story that makes Quarter Horse racing exciting, and it’s the ultimate dream that you could
ever do such a thing. And they accomplished it.”
“They’re poster children for the American Quarter Horse racing profile,” adds Butch Wise, general manager of the Lazy E Ranch in Guthrie, Oklahoma. “They bred a millionaire, and they did it with just one mare, staying with the same family of horses all these years.”
THEIR EARLY YEARS
Jim, the son of James - a U.S. Marine - and Helen O’Neal, was
born in Michigan and grew up with his sister Peggy at his father’s various duty stations around the U.S. He wrestled for Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau but left school before earning his degree. His great- grandfather had been a jockey and his grandfather trained horses and mules for the U.S. Army. “When he was about five, he started helping his dad and uncles, who were cutting timber, riding the horses that pulled the logs,” Donna says.
In 1963 at age 15, he bought his first “very own” horse, a Quarter Horse that he trained himself. The pair started showing in Western pleasure, reining, cutting and horsemanship until Jim had to take a two-year
break to serve in the army. When he got out in 1970, he returned to his horse passion, this time attracted to the excitement of racing. He started training in 1973, sometimes showing the horses he raised to race. “I’d sent horses to trainers a couple years before that,” he says.
“He always worked at various jobs to supplement his horses; horses are where his love and his heart have always been,” Donna adds.
Donna, the daughter of Donald and Lorene Becker, grew up in a cattle-raising — though horseless
— family with her brother Kerry in Jones, Oklahoma, 20 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. “To my dad, a horse was just something else you had to feed,” Donna says.
While in college, Donna worked at a local convenience store, which is where she met Jim. “He was partners with Don Timberlake at that time,” she says. “Jim and Don found a really good facility here in Jones and built the horse ranch there.”
On one of their first dates, Jim took Donna to a horse race. “I was pretty much hooked then!” she says.
Although she worked in education as a teacher for 16 years, as a counselor for one and as assistant principal and principal for nine, she was involved in the horse operation on and off from day one. “I got a little too good at cleaning stalls,” she jokes.
“
“Breeding a horse to make over $1 million and only having one mare —
40
SPEEDHORSE August 2022