Miss Olene was a product – and a producer – of American Quarter Horse racing royalty.
Bred and raced by A.B. Green, who also raced Go Man Go and stood the stallion on his Green Pastures stud farm at Purcell, Oklahoma, Miss Olene was by Leo, and her dam was the Patriotic (TB) mare Barbara L, both parents members of the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame.
Miss Olene was a winner on the track, where she earned $31,022 while compiling a record of 11-3-3 in 33 starts. She was the dam of the earners of $700,673 on the track in the 1960s and 1970s. Miss Olene produced 17 foals, 15 of which started on the track and 10 came back as winners, four of those in stakes.
Little Blue Sheep, Miss Olene’s 1972 foal by St Bar, was the world champion aged mare twice and produced stakes winners Browns Dasher and Rheaetta. Miss Olene also produced the stakes-placed The Louisiana Girl, whose six stakes winners include the track-record-setting champion Jess Louisiana Blue, who has sired the earners of more than $7.2 million.
Miss Olene produced Miss Angel Eyes, who won the Kansas Futurity and was third in Hall of Famer Rocket Wrangler’s Rainbow Futurity, and went on to produce one stakes winner and three other winners from five starters. Another Miss Olene foal, Takeme Freely, won the Debutante Handicap and was third in Game Plan’s Bay Meadows Futurity, and produced three starters, all winners. Miss Olene also was the dam of Rillito Derby winner Master’s Angel by Master Hand (TB), who produced six winners from seven starters.
Miss Olene also produced the stakes-placed Bar Tonto mare Prissy Olene and Little Bar Olene, a Three Bars (TB) filly who was second in the 1965 Rainbow Futurity and earned points at halter to become an AQHA Champion.
“If you take the money that her babies earned in the ’60s and ’70s and factored it in today’s dollars, you’d have millions,” says Frank Merrill, an AQHA past president. “When you look at Miss Olene’s place in history, you see that she was just one of those great blue hens that left her mark on the breed.”
Miss Olene was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2013.
Biography updated as of March 2013.