Well, just take a look at the video–and then show us a horse more eligible for stardom, the year the soccer World Cup comes to America.As a yearling, he would roll a beach ball around his paddock 45 minutes at a time. Using his feet, his nose, arching his body. As a rule, other youngsters on the farm do no more than pick it up with their teeth, shake it.“And that kind of gives you the essence of this colt,” Kris Gibbons suggests. “We just want to stop them getting bored when they're separated. But this one taught himself how to play soccer. He would move that thing all over the field, run up and down, just had a blast. In the end he actually started tossing the ball over the fence, when we were the other side, so that we would throw it back into the paddock. I really think we could have taught him to play volleyball!”If he didn't make a runner, he could be in the circus. As things have turned out, however, this singular aptitude was a first indicator of equally unusual prowess. For this is Nearly (Not This Time), the GIII Holy Bull Stakes winner who heads to the GI Florida Derby on Mar. 28.And surely it stands to reason that playfully stretching his developing physiology may have contributed to Nearly's athleticism today. Certainly Gibbons is not ruling that out-not after seeing his response, when bumped leaving the gate in his third start.“He was on his knees,” she recalls. “Luckily John Velazquez stayed on, but the horse recovered immediately. And I really do believe that playing with that ball contributed to his ability to recover, after going down like that; that it gave him a lot of the agility and ease that he moves with.”In which case, you have to wonder whether this is the kind of dividend that only a boutique operation like this might stumble across. Gibbons only foals out half a dozen mares a year at Wind Hill Farm near Morriston, Florida, and raising their young is an intimate process.“We are very hands-on with our horses,” Gibbons acknowledges. “So we're able to provide that type of monitoring and interaction. And it's just such a pleasure just to watch them play and develop, one of the huge benefits of being small.”After all, there's a difference between the funding and founding of the farm. Yes, it is essential to complete such transactions as the $350,000 received from Centennial Farms for Nearly at the 2024 Keeneland September Sale. But the operation was begun and maintained by passion, pure and simple. It was a love of horses that lured Gibbons from Miami to university in Lexington, enabling her to work mornings at Keeneland racetrack; and when embarking on a career as a tax lawyer, her plan was always to save enough to return to the Bluegrass, buy a little farm and raise horses. “And that's exactly what I did,” she says happily.They were near Shelbyville, halfway between Louisville and Lexington, and by no means required the full 200 acres: some was woodland, some farmed by a sharecropper, but they had a wonderful barn and pasture. Gibbons patiently bedded the place down, between its purchase in the late 1980s and selection of a first mare at the 1995 Keeneland November Sale.To the Hunt was a 10-year-old, Virginia-bred daughter of Relaunch, who had progressed from claimers to be placed in a graded stakes and barely started her second career. In foal to Smarten, she cost just $43,000.Kris Gibbons | Courtesy of Kris GIbbons“Her pedigree fit the criteria that I've always used,” Gibbons recalls. “But I also have a soft heart for grays, and she was gorgeous. I mean, her head and her eye, she just had the look of a superior mare. And she was. With age, she had a few physical problems, particularly her ankle which we had to have fused. But she was so smart. Eventually all we had to do was open the stall door and she would take herself out and graze. And when she'd had enough, she'd bring herself back in.”The mare's Smarten filly was sold as a weanling, but Gibbons bought her back privately after she won a mediocre race as Emerging Glory. To the Hunt had meanwhile gone to Dynaformer, and the resulting filly tempted an aspiring young bloodstock agent named Donato Lanni into a nervous $35,000 gamble. George Krikorian agreed to take her, and she became millionaire Starrer. Since then, moreover, Starrer has become granddam of Breeders' Cup winner Just F Y I (Justify).Then, three years later, To the Hunt delivered the Wild Rush filly who would become triple Grade I winner Stellar Jayne. Not a bad first mare.“I haven't managed to match George Krikorian yet, breeding an Eclipse champion from the bloodline, but I'm still working on it,” says Gibbons with a laugh. “I have a 2-year-old Honor A.P. filly out of Emerging Glory's daughter by Include, and hope to breed her. That would be a fifth generation, so I'm still trying–and I'm quite determined!”As she proved, indeed, in pursuing a Mineshaft filly named Ib Prospecting, who was contesting claimers out in California in 2018. She has a remarkable pedigree, with half-brothers A.P. Indy and Summer Squall grandsire and damsire respectively. But what really drew Gibbons was her kinship to a mare on her farm, Frolic's Appeal (Trippi), whose Union Rags yearling had sold nicely at Keeneland the previous year, before proving a home-run pinhook for her purchasers and, as Dessman, missing the GII San Vicente by a nose. Gibbons enlisted trainer Pat Gallagher to try and claim Ib Prospecting, but lost consecutive shakes and then had a private bid rejected. Finally, however, they succeeded with a $25,000 claim at Del Mar.Ib Prospecting proved a desperately unlucky broodmare. She missed one season altogether and then lost a foal by Not This Time, alertly picked out while still affordably making his name. Then, last year, came a final, tragic nadir.“Bless her heart, she lost her immune system,” Gibbons explains. “The vets were fabulous, gave her six blood transfusions until her red platelet level was finally high enough to come back to the farm. But it wasn't a week later that she started to founder. In the end she was in so much pain that we just needed to do the right thing.”These things will happen, with horses. Emerging Glory, for instance, had a Rock Hard Ten filly named The Mailet, who won a juvenile graded stakes in California back in 2009, only to suffer a fatal breakdown days later. But the great thing, with Ib Prospecting, is that she did leave a legacy. There's a Taiba yearling on the farm, for one thing, and his page is meanwhile being giddily elevated–Gibbons, very fortunately, having persevered with Not This Time after Ib Prospecting lost their foal.“He was up-and-coming, I always liked Giant's Causeway, and it was such a good nicking pattern,” she explains. “So I thought we just had to breed back to him. And we got fortunate.”For the resulting colt, of course, is Nearly. It did not take long, after his sale, for word to filter through from Ocala that he was shaping well in pre-training; and, once reaching Todd Pletcher on the racetrack, his published works confirmed his talent. That made Nearly's debut shocker an unwelcome surprise, but he has since produced three explosive performances.“I was fortunate enough to be in Miami for the Holy Bull and, oh my gosh, it was so much fun,” Gibbons says. “It's so comforting that he has a Hall of Fame trainer, a Hall of Fame jockey, and a patient owner who believes in letting horses mature, and come into their own, before pressing them. That's everything you want when you sell: for them to be given the best opportunity to become a racehorse.”The Taiba colt will naturally be cashed in, through Denali Stud at one of the principal yearling sales later this year.“Of course I'd like to keep them all,” Gibbons admits. “But my husband wouldn't be very happy if I did! The Taiba is a nice colt. He's going to be big, like Nearly, even if his personality won't be quite so large! And he has hasn't learned soccer yet: just picks the ball up and drops it.”One way or another, a woman whose first mare produced two Grade I winners has now come up with a potential Classic colt from a six-mare band. These two achievements are divided by four decades, so evidently Gibbons is doing something consistently right.True, the location has meanwhile changed: Gibbons began to tire of Kentucky winters, and suspects that her horses prefer the Florida version, too, especially as she raises stock outdoors as much as possible.“Unless they have a reason to be up in the barn, we keep them out,” she confirms. “I think it's best for them, to be out in that sunshine, the fresh air, the grass, they can run and play and be themselves. But in the end I don't know that it's anything more than a lot of luck. A lot of passion, yes, and a lot of hard work. But I mean, that's true of everyone.”Maybe, however, that humble outlook is itself part of her success. If she turns out to have bred a Derby winner, it won't be because she was ever on any kind of mission, trying to prove something. She just loves these animals. Gibbons describes herself as “just the kid that watched National Velvet and read the Black Stallion books, who wanted a horse and could never have one.” She never had a mentor. She pored over pedigrees, groomed at the track, gratefully took tips from consignors. If Nearly were to become famous, her gratitude would principally be on behalf of a lamented mare.“We could truly honor her, if that could happen,” Gibbons says. “But all we can do is keep our fingers crossed. There's a lot to happen between now and then. The day after the Holy Bull, one of our mares aborted. So you go from being on top of the world to that. And it's truly humbling. Mother Nature is in control of so much, and we're not.“Before the Holy Bull, I hadn't seen him since the sale. So to see how magnificent he is, and then for him to do something like that, it's very rewarding. I guess that's why we're so passionate about what we do. It's the grace and beauty of these Thoroughbreds that makes everything worthwhile.”The post Keeneland Breeders Spotlight: Gibbons Set Nearly’s Derby Goal appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.