Kip Deville is further proof that a truly good horse can come from anywhere. The 4-year-old winner of the NetJets Breeders’ Cup Mile (gr. IT) is the second Oklahoma-bred horse to win a Breeders’ Cup World Championship race. The first was the outstanding mare Lady’s Secret, who won the Distaff in 1986.
The gray colt is by Kipling, who stands for $2,500 at Mighty Acres, near Pryor, Okla., and is out of Klondike Kaytie, a minor stakes winner who sold for $6,000 in foal to Lucky Lionel in 2001 at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales October mixed sale. Klondike Kaytie was purchased in Ocala by agent Chad Schumer for Dr. Warren and Linda Center.
Schumer was shopping for mares because he had purchased Kipling privately from Michael Tabor and Susan Magnier with Coolmore as a stallion prospect for the Centers the previous year. Kipling, a son of Gulch out of the unraced mare Weekend Storm, had been purchased as a yearling for $1.4 million by Coolmore’s bloodstock agent Demi O’Byrne. The colt was so valuable because his granddam is Weekend Surprise, who produced top sires A.P. Indy, Summer Squall, and Honor Grades.
Kipling was a disappointment as a runner, however, for Tabor and Magnier, having won only $121,862. The Centers, who own both Center Hills Farm (in Arkansas) and Mighty Acres, ran Kipling about another two years before retiring him to stud.
Kip Deville is the first foal the Centers got out of Klondike Kaytie. He was sold as a yearling for $20,000 in the Fasig-Tipton Texas August yearling sale to South Wind Ranch and Wayne Cobb. The colt is now owned by a partnership that includes Michael Iavarone and Richard Schiavo of IEAH Stables, Roy Cobb, Andrew Cohen, Steve Cohen, Doug Roberts, and John Roberts. Kip Deville has won four graded stakes and earned more than $2.4 million.
While lightning rarely strikes twice, this year is the second time the Centers have owned the dam of a Breeders’ Cup winner. In 2004 Schumer bought a mare named Gift of Dance for $20,000 at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale. Two years later one of Gift of Dance’s daughters, named Round Pond, won the Emirates Airline Breeders’ Cup Distaff (gr. I).
“It has been a lot of fun this year screaming for Kip Deville with the same people who were screaming for Round Pond,” Schumer said.
Unfortunately, both Klondike Kaytie and Gift of Dance died within the past couple years. Gift of Dance died in 2005 soon after foaling a colt by Hold That Tiger.