Jana Barbe

They may be pretty new to this business, but Jana and Roy Barbe are perfectly aware that it won't always be like this; that many breeders, in fact, have worked with Thoroughbreds all their lives without ever experiencing anything quite like Saturday night. First they watched a colt they had raised winning the GIII Peter Pan S. by 10 1/4 lengths, for the crop's joint-highest Beyer, lining up a return to the same track for the GI Belmont S. As related in TDN last week, the Barbes had acquired We...

Somehow they had got it into their heads that it might be nice to buy "a small, gentleman's farm", just 10 acres or so, as an eventual retirement project. Jana Barbe's daughters, emulating her own childhood passion, had always enjoyed riding and some of the show horses were kept here in Kentucky. Such a beautiful part of the world, they hired a local broker and did some idle prospecting. Then came the 2008 crash. "And this business, being built on disposable income, suffered terribly," Barbe recalls. "Suddenly it felt like...