Famed breeder Brittany Farms lives on in harness racing’s most famous barn.

by Dave Briggs

Inside harness racing’s most famous octagon, the fight is against the emotions that come with the passage of time — which is only fair considering the name on the building.

Up the wide wooden stairs and hidden behind a closed door off the interior balcony at the Standardbred Stable of Memories, the last four decades of remarkable Brittany Farms history is laid out like a museum exhibit. The trophies and photos and banners and halters honoring harness racing royalty is a gobsmacking testament to everything Brittany owner George Segal has built in the sport in a relatively short time considering the age of the building where that bounty is now housed.

For the last 142 years, the Round Barn, as it’s also known, has unflinchingly stood sentinel over the sport’s most famous ring of clay as the city of Lexington has marched on both bit by bit. The barn has been there for all but eight of The Red Mile’s 150 years, which means it has witnessed some of the greatest moments, horses and people in harness racing history.

On a perfectly-still Kentucky autumn evening, if you lean in just right on the white three-board fence separating the red dirt from the red door, you can feel the ghosts of Greyhound and Moni Maker and Niatross and Somebeachsomewhere thundering; you can still hear echoes from the grandstand cascading down the stretch.

One of my favorite memories is having the good fortune to bask in those spirits as the dusk slipped into darkness and the Gods sprinkled stars across the heavens.

Art Zubrod, the only farm manager Brittany had in its 39-year history, has felt some of the same ghosts, heard some of the same echoes.

“[The Stable of Memories] talks to you without having a voice,” Zubrod said.

In the end, it called out to Brittany just in time. In October, the night before the farm began selling its last crop of yearlings at the Lexington Selected Yearling Sale, a gala was held at the Stable of Memories to officially welcome Brittany’s treasures to the treasured barn.

“The last thing that came together was [placing Brittany’s] trophies [in the Stable of Memories],” Zubrod said. “I had sleepless nights about it. I did not want to have to auction them. It would’ve crushed me. It would have crushed all of us. Then Kathy Parker came up with this idea and it took a weight off all of us.”

So it is that the tiered wedding-cake building came to have the perfect marriage with Brittany’s gifts; sort of a memories for the mementoes and an old Kentucky home for a great Kentucky farm.

Considering the long list of champions Brittany bred, raced or both, the display is a fitting tribute to greats such as Artsplace, Cantab Hall, Western Hanover, Three Diamonds, Bettor’s Wish, Manchego, Continentalvictory, Art Major, Father Patrick, Glidemaster, Mr Muscleman, Six Pack, Mr Feelgood, Life Sign, Perfect Sting, Artspeak, Real Desire, Artiscape, Western Ideal, Self Possessed, American Jewel, He’s Watching, State Treasurer, Pastor Stephen and many, many more.

That Brittany also bred Twin B Joe Fresh, this year’s probable Horse of the Year, is a sublime final chapter to the story of the farm’s closure. That Brittany’s land has been sold to Marvin Katz is the perfect epilogue.

It means that patch of bountiful bluegrass will continue to produce standardbred champions as the breeding end of Brittany takes its place among giants Castleton, Armstrong Bros., Lana Lobell and many more in horse racing Valhalla.

In the nearly four decades since Segal purchased Bill Shehan’s Clermont Farm and Brittany was born in Versailles, KY in 1985, the farm has produced more millionaires (47) than years it’s been in the game. It has nearly as many Breeders Crown trophies (31 from 23 different horses) to its credit, second most only to Hanover Shoe Farms.

That history all comes washing back as you walk on creaking wooden floors, count years that feel like minutes and marvel at the names on the silver and glass and bronze.

Yet, while one should never overlook even a single Hambletonian, Crown, Jug or Pace — and here there are multiples of most — one smallish, framed photo stood out among the riches.

It hangs just below a large burgundy and white Brittany flag and features the farm’s three principals — Segal, Zubrod and Zubrod’s wife, Leah Cheverie, who has been the office manager almost as long as there has been a Brittany. They are standing arm-in-arm under a farm sign at their shedrow at the Fasig-Tipton sales pavilion. Judging by the styles, fewer wrinkles and dark hair that is now gray, the photo was taken much closer to Brittany’s beginnings than its end. The three beam with confidence, enthusiasm and hope for what might be. It was anything but certain then, but we know now that they made for a formidable trio at a formidable farm.

It’s nice to think they will live on forever in the house of memories, frozen in time among the inspiring architecture as the architects of something magical.