Frank Penn

Needless to say, all four tried to reject their billing. Between them, after all, they have spent the better part of three centuries dealing with that vehicle of humility, the Thoroughbred. To everyone else present, however, the opportunity to tap into the experience of four such sages as Bill Landes, Frank Penn, Tom Thornbury and John Williams fully justified the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers Club in promoting their latest meeting in Lexington as "An Evening with Legends." Each, moreover, could be consoled that one of the first tasks addressed--an acknowledgement...

The stable name traces to a ranch they once owned in the Oregon outback: "Bar C" was how they branded their cattle. But while Neal and Pam Christopherson are proud of their home state, and have achieved a great deal there, even they couldn't make horses pay in those gulch-carved scrublands, under those huge empty skies. "Telocaset, Union, Oregon," Neal says. "Snows an inch, drifts 10 feet. Cold country." But horses are tough, no? "Well, they are," replies Neal. "But we lost a heck of a nice Quarter Horse colt...

Alex Penn wasn't at Keeneland when his family's Penn Sales sent their first seven-figure yearling through the ring during Book 1 of the September Sale. He was back home in Bourbon County, busy prepping the rest of their consignment's yearlings pointing for the later books. "They were all drinking champagne and I was grooming horses," he said as he jokingly nudged his wife Kendra and laughed, because really, he wouldn't have it any other way. His family's business was founded a century ago as an all-purpose farm--over the years raising...

Well, okay, maybe he has retired--but Frank Penn has never quit. "You know the problem with life?" he asks with a chuckle. "By the time you know everything you need to know, you're too damn old to do anything with it." But that won't keep the rest of us from profiting. We're not here to learn about the half-dozen mares Penn still shares with brother John and nephew Alex, over at their place near Paris, nor about the show horses keeping him interested in his own paddocks. Instead we're at...

Lexington native Frank Penn raised both Thoroughbreds and tobacco for the better part of 50 years at Pennbrook Farm, his 300-acre spread out on Mt. Horeb Pike. Based on that experience, he has some words of caution for the bloodstock industry as it enters a new era of protectionism with The Jockey Club's recent rule change limiting to 140 the number of mares a stallion can cover, starting with foals of 2020. In short, Penn said, the Thoroughbred industry should read Kentucky's now-withered tobacco leaves to glean a lesson in...