Jeff Tyer raised JT True Grit from birth and is enjoying his stakes winning runner.

© Richard Chamberlain

By Richard Chamberlain

GRAND PRAIRIE, TX–OCTOBER 19, 2023–The best things in life are worth waiting for. Jeff Tyer has waited a long time for this one.

Tyer's homebred Capo De Capi gelding JT True Grit will go to post in Saturday evening's $125,000-estimated John Deere Juvenile Challenge Championship (G2).

"I raised him from a baby," Tyer says. "I still own him and I train him."

The gelding is one of two starters, both winners, out of Redneck Kitty ($72,423), a winning daughter of champion Country Chicks Man. The sire of the earners of more than $6.2 million, Capo De Capi ($244,647) is owned by James Sills of Cedar Hill, Texas, and stands at Dee and Betty Raper's Belle Mere Farms at Norman, Oklahoma.

It's a kind of family affair.

"Me and my mom had two babies in the pasture," says Tyer, who lives at Tahlequah, Oklahoma. "My Mom raised one and I had the other. They were born in the pasture together and we kept them together when we weaned them. They were always competing with each other out there, running across the field, playing, doing everything, and they both did real well this year."

That put Tyer in a contest with his mother, Juanita Tyer.

"Me and Mom have been in kind of competition with each other, and she's got me beat right now," he says, with a laugh. "Mom's horse, JT Im That Boy, ran fourth in the Remington Park (Oklahoma Bred Futurity, RG1) and has made close to $130,000, and my horse is just a couple hundred (dollars) from making a hundred (thousand). We turned her colt out after last week, after he won an allowance race at Will Rogers, and I told her 'I'm going to pass you after the race at Lone Star.' "

JT True Grit qualified to the John Deere final with a score by 1 1/4 lengths in the $92,472 John Deere Will Rogers Juvenile Challenge Stakes on October 1. With Roman Cruz up, the gelding sprinted 350 yards in :17.394 while posting a 104 speed index.

JT True Grit was winning for the fifth time in eight starts, and the $42,537 winner's share of the purse from his first stakes win increased his earnings to $99,577. The gelding also ran third in the July 22 Speedhorse Futurity (G3) over 350 yards at Fair Meadows in Tulsa, and he was a finalist on March 25 in the 300-yard Oklahoma Futurity (G2) at Remington Park.

"The horse is still finishing at 350," Tyer says. "I don't think he'd work at 400, not yet, anyway, but at 350 he's strong. He ran a :17:39 in the final at Will Rogers and I thought that was way above what he could do. I figured :17.50 would be right where he'd be, but he proved me wrong. So I'm glad I was wrong."

This is where wrong makes right.

"That was actually my first-ever stakes win," the horseman says. "I've got some good broodmares and I've trained horses for years, but I'm just now stepping up to this level of horses, so that meant a lot to me.

"I'm 53 years old and I'm living the dream," Tyer says. "The horse is a blessing to me. And I'm thanking God for it."

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