Mike Neatherlin, a regular presence in the Southwest training ranks since the early 1990s and first trainer of Breeders' Cup Mile winner Kip Deville, died Sunday due to complications from COVID-19. He was 65.
The Waterford, Texas-based trainer saddled 186 combined Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse winners, with combined on-track earnings of over $2.7 million. He saddled his first starters in 1991, first focusing primarily on Quarter Horses at Trinity Meadows and Sunland Park, before making the switch to Thoroughbreds in the years that followed.
Neatherlin had just recently seen the most lucrative years of his training career, earning over $250,000 for the first time in 2018 and eclipsing that amount each following year.
That was helped along greatly by the ascent of Mr. Money Bags. A Texas homebred for Roy Cobb, the Silver City gelding won five stakes races in his home state, and ventured out to Zia Park in New Mexico for an additional pair of stakes scores, for earnings of $491,376.
Mr. Money Bags was named Texas Horse of the Year in 2019, on the strength of a campaign that included wins in the Jim's Orbit Stakes and Groovy Stakes at Sam Houston Race Park, the Texas Stallion Stymie Division Stakes at Lone Star Park, and the Roadrunner Stakes and Zia Park Derby in New Mexico. The gelding also took Neatherlin into national-level competition, with starts in the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile at Churchill Downs, and the listed Iowa Derby.
Neatherlin was also the first trainer and co-owner of eventual Breeders' Cup winner Kip Deville. He started the Oklahoma-bred's training after the colt was purchased by Wayne Cobb and South Wind Ranch for $20,000 at the 2004 Fasig-Tipton Texas Yearling Sale. Neatherlin then consigned Kip Deville at the following year's Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale, where he finished under his reserve at $32,000.
Under Neatherlin's shedrow, Kip Deville started his career racing in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas. He won the Texas Heritage Stakes at Sam Houston, then finished out of the money in the G3 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park, before winning the listed Grand Prairie Turf Challenge Stakes at Lone Star Park by four lengths.
That effort grabbed the attention of owner IEAH Stables, which bought Kip Deville privately in the middle of his 3-year-old season and moved him to the barn of trainer Rick Dutrow. The horse would go on to become a seven-time graded stakes winner, with three of them coming against Grade 1 competition, including the 2007 Breeders' Cup Mile at Monmouth Park.
Neatherlin also owned several of his own racehorses, led by six-figure earning Texas-breds Light Up the Devil and Catch the Devil.
Among Neatherlin's successful pinhooks at auction was Airoforce, who he bought for $20,000 at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Yearling Sale and sold for $350,000 at the following year's OBS Spring Sale, through his son Lane Richardson's Richardson Bloodstock. Airoforce would go on to become a multiple graded stakes winner and finish second in the 2015 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf.
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