Kristine Gibbons’ joy is evident in her voice; her bright laughter ripples down the phone line as you talk to her. And she’s got a very good reason to be so happy. After all, her Wind Hill Farm bred Kentucky Derby (G1) contender Nearly. The Not This Time colt joined the road to the Run for the Roses with a dominating, 5 3/4-length win in the Jan. 31 Holy Bull Stakes (G3) at Gulfstream Park.
Louisville native Gibbons has been a horse lover from the jump. She grew up idolizing Ruffian and loving equine books and movies growing up. “In undergrad in Lexington, I worked out at Keeneland in the morning, hot-walking them and grooming,” she explained. Eventually, she headed to Miami. “I went to law school, got my master’s in tax, and I said, ‘When I’m making enough money, I’m going back to Kentucky and I’m buying a horse farm and I’m going to breed Thoroughbreds.’ And that’s what I did, and luckily my husband went along with all that.” Her first foray into breeding saw her purchase To the Hunt. Two of that mare’s foals, Starrer and Stellar Jayne, became multiple grade 1 winners. Starrer’s granddaughter Just F Y I even won the 2023 NetJets Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1) en route to a divisional championship.
From Florida, Gibbons moved back to Kentucky in the 1980s. However, the overwhelming cold prompted her to return to the Sunshine State in 2015. There, she has taken a very active role in the operation. “Until three years ago, when Nearly was born, I’ve always done my own foaling,” she said. She noted, “Now I send my mares to Kentucky, to Norevale Farm, but Nearly was one of the last foals I foaled myself here on the farm and yeah, what an exciting ride this has been.”
Nearly hails from a female family whose best members often had “Frolic” in their names. That includes his fourth dam, graded winner and producer Cherokee Frolic, but Nearly’s own dam is named Ib Prospecting. Gibbons admired the female family, so when she noticed Ib Prospecting was running for a claiming tag in California, she became interested. After trying and failing to claim her several times, Gibbons ultimately became successful in adding her to the broodmare band.
But breeding Ib Prospecting wasn’t without challenges. “We had some problems,” Gibbons said. “She had her first foal [Diente d’Oro, by Medaglia d’Oro], we sold, I think for $180,000 as a weanling. And then she had a bunch of female problems, and it took us a while to get her back in foal. We bred to Not This Time when he was, I think, $40,000, because I love [his sire] Giant’s Causeway, and he was up-and-coming; well, she lost that foal and then we went back, and that’s Nearly.”
As a youngster, people-loving Nearly got bored in the paddock, so Gibbons gave him a ball. “The first couple he immediately popped, and then I found one that he couldn’t,” she remembered, “it had a cover, and so he started picking it up and shaking it. This horse was so agile, he taught himself how to play soccer with it. Literally he would take his front feet and just move it all around his paddock and push it with his nose. I swear, it’s one of the reasons why he is so agile.”
Consigned by Denali Stud, Nearly fetched $350,000 at the 2024 Keeneland September Yearling sale from eventual owners Centennial Farms. He broke his maiden in his second start last November, drawing off to a 9 1/4-length victory under John Velazquez at Gulfstream Park. In his three-year-old debut Jan. 2 at Gulfstream, Nearly was knocked around a bit at the start of the race; Gibbons noted he used that agility to recover. Nearly went on to win by five lengths.
Next up was the Holy Bull, which Gibbons was able to attend. She clarified it was the “first time I met Don Little and his sons and the folks that are in the partnership that own this colt, and it was so special, and to see him win—he won by almost six lengths. To watch him win this, and he and John Velazquez, I mean, they just seemed to have an affinity for each other. It was just a fabulous afternoon.”
In 2025, Ib Prospecting developed an autoimmune disease; she received six blood transfusions, but then she foundered and had to be put down. She has an Authentic two-year-old filly and a Taiba yearling colt. If their half-brother wins his next race—the Curlin Florida Derby (G1) on March 28—these already-exciting prospects and their connections will have even more to celebrate.
