Stallion Access does not report the buyers of its seasons and shares at auction. The Distorted Humor share was sold to a buyer bidding by phone through Fasig-Tipton staff. Distorted Humor, a WinStar farm stallion who is also the sire of Awesome Humor, was last year's leading freshman sire.

The evening's top season price was $125,000 for a no-guarantee season to the Claiborne Farm stallion Seeking the Gold. Earlier in the auction, another no-guarantee season to that stallion sold for $100,000 as the night's second-highest price for a season. Among the seasons failing to reach their reserves was one to Danzig, who also stands at Claiborne; that season went unsold on a final bid of $87,000.

The auction sold 30 seasons for a total of $682,400, for an average price of $22,747. Only two stallion shares were sold: the $500,000 Distorted Humor share and a $1,700 Private Terms share.

ClassicStar sold the Storm Cat colt out of Grade 3 winner Broad Smile, by Broad Brush, through the Taylor Made Sales Agency.

The $1.2 million sale topped a night of strong selling but did not topple the sale's highest price, set on Wednesday night at the three-day auction's second session. That was the $2.7 million that Satish and Anne Sanan's Padua Stables paid for an Unbridled - Words of War (Lord at War) colt sold by Stone Farm and Stonerside Stable.

The Thursday night session concluded an auction that saw gains across the board. The 2003 edition of the sale sold 154 yearlings for $48,257,000, up a dramatic 37 percent from last year's returns of $35,242,000 for 140 lots. The three-day average price was $313,357, a 25-percent increase from last year's $251,729. Median also gained, climbing 33 percent to $240,000. In another positive note, buybacks declined from last year's figure of 29 percent to 21 percent in 2003.

Padua bought the session-topping son of Words of War after a protracted bidding duel with B. Wayne Hughes.

Arthur Hancock III's Stone Farm and Robert and Janice MacNair's Stonerside Stable consigned the colt, who is a half-brother to dual Grade 2 winner E Dubai and to Grade 1 winner No Matter What. Importantly, the colt is from the last crop of the highly successful stallion Unbridled, who died two years ago after a long battle with intestinal ailments.

Led by that colt, the session logged impressive gains over last year's second session. The 2003 session sold 49 lots for $17,440,000 in total receipts, up 48 percent from last year's equivalent session, when the upper end of the market underwent a sharp contraction. Wednesday's average price this year was $355,918, an increase of 33 percent over last year's session average of $268,636. Median price also fared dramatically better, improving by 28 percent to reach $250,000 this year. The buyback rate also improved from 31 percent at last year's second night to 27 percent in 2003.

The Unbridled colt was one of three colts to pass the $1 million mark on Wednesday night. Earlier in the session, a colt sired by Unbridled's fashionable young son Unbridled's Song brought $1.4 million from John Oxley, who campaigned 2001 Kentucky Derby winner Monarchos. That colt, out of the stakes-winning Storm cat mare Silken Cat, went through the ring as part of Taylor Made Sales Agency's consignment. The Taylor Made agency also sold the evening's other seven-figure colt, a $1.9 million A. P. Indy colt who was a three-quarters brother to 2002 juvenile champion Vindication.

The $1.9 million A. P. Indy colt, bred by Virginia Kraft Payson's Payson Stud, was the subject of some post-auction deal-making. The hammer price of $1.9 million actually failed to reach the colt's reserve price, which undoubtedly had been decided with Vindication's 2001 Saratoga sale price of $2.15 million in mind. But within moments of the colt's exit from the Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion, buyers been strategizing. Trainer Patrick Biancone, who currently occupies the old Payson stables at Saratoga and has trained successful runners for Payson in the past, was the first to put together a successful partnership deal, and Payson agreed to sell the colt privately to that partnership. Payson said she would remain involved with an undisclosed interest in the colt, who will join Biancone's stable.

The Fasig-Tipton Saratoga select yearling sale was to continue through Thursday at the Finney Pavilion with its final session starting at 7:30 p.m.

The session-topper, bought by Eugene Melnyk, was among the first few horses in the ring. A daughter of Storm Cat, the filly sold as Hip No. 13 from the Lane's End agency. She is the fourth foal out of 1996 champion older mare Jewel Princess, whose three other Storm Cat foals so far have yielded only one placed runner. That is a colt named One Nice Cat, who placed last year in Ireland.

Veterinarian Robert McMartin, bidding on behalf of Melnyk, signed the ticket. The filly was the only seven-figure lot of the night.

Held in a steady rain, the first of three sessions sold 54 of 65 yearlings offered for a total of $16,547,000, up 49 percent from the 2002 opener's $11,112,000 gross for 46 yearlings. Average price also leaped by 27 percent, from $241,565 last year to $306,426. Median rose as well, improving 28 percent from $195,000 last year to $250,000. The figures appeared dramatic, but followed last year's equally sharp slides as the top of the select yearling market corrected from the inflated prices seen in 200 and 2001.

In another positive note, buybacks also declined, falling from last year's 32 percent to just 17 percent.

The night's second-highest price and top colt was a $750,000 Unbridled's Song colt out of La Gueriere that the Dromoland/Hartwell agency sold to B.T.A. Stable. The colt is a half-brother to Grade 2 winner Lasting Approval and is from the family of Grade 1 winner Al Mamoon. Dromoland/Hartwell purchased the colt as a weanling at Keeneland last November for $380,000.

The sale continues through Thursday night with sessions beginning each evening at 7:30.

The town's reputation as a sales ground for prime bloodstock is more recent, but just as famous. Since 1917, when the Fasig-Tipton Company first hammered its stakes into the ground across Union Avenue from the racetrack and opened a yearling auction there, the company's name has become synonymous with Saratoga. And sale week has been firmly installed on the business and social calendars of Thoroughbred lovers around the world.

From record auction prices to scandalous gossip, Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga sale has been a fertile source both of racehorses and timeless turf stories.

William Fasig and Edward Tipton first met in New York City, where they founded the Fasig-Tipton auction house in 1898 primarily to sell trotters. Their office assistant, Enoch James Tranter - a former stable boy who eventually took over the company - was the man who brought the sale to Saratoga. Supported by some of the leading Thoroughbred breeders of the day, Tranter wisely decided to follow the money trail from New York City to Saratoga every August, when everyone who was anyone in the city went upstate for sport and gambling, as today's millionaires and billionaires still do.

Even after anti-gambling reformers in the local establishment shuttered the town's casino for good in 1907, Saratoga's other main attraction, the racetrack, survived. So did Tranter's little Thoroughbred sale, which had harnessed the honorables' passion for racehorses and turned it into a fantastically profitable business.

In 2001, Fasig-Tipton Company had its best run ever. During three consecutive evenings, the 2001 auction sold 162 yearlings for more than $62 million, or an average price of more than $385,000 a horse.

The champions and great horses sold there are legion, starting with Man o' War in 1918, at the auction's second edition. In his memoirs, "Fair Exchange," late Fasig-Tipton chairman Humphrey Finney described another memorable sale in 1929, the night when a colt named New Broom set a yearling sale record of $75,000. Tranter told the assembled crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, no yearling is worth $75,000!" It's hard to know what he would have made of 2002's champion juvenile, Vindication, who sold for $2.15 million at the record-breaking sale of 2001, or of the countless other million-dollar yearlings who have passed through the ring.

Terence Collier, Fasig-Tipton's current announcer and publicity officer, says such moments offer a particular thrill for the men in the auctioneer's stand that overlooks the pavilion's 1,050 seats.

"The eye contact is very close, and you can feel and see the emotion," he said. "You see the consignor slowly melting into disbelief, you see the underbidder seething with frustration that what he wanted to happen isn't going to happen, and the ultimate buyer absolutely beaming that he or she has done what they wanted to do: land their prize. It can be very moving."

But it's not always so easy to tell who the various bidders are. Walt Robertson, president of Fasig-Tipton, who started at Saratoga in 1977 as a bid-spotter, notes that some of the wealthiest buyers often arrange subtle signals that communicate to their spotter - and only to their spotter - that they are in or out.

Robertson recalls one such incident in the mid-1980's, when million-dollar yearlings became routine. Three powerful buying agents - James Delahooke, George Blackwell, and Michael Goodbody - were all seated near Robertson and used him as their spotter. When an especially well-bred colt came in, all three converged on him.

"Goodbody would bid by stepping on my foot, Blackwell would give my leg a nudge with his catalog, and Delahooke bid discreetly from the back of the room," Robertson said. "The price went into the neighborhood of $1 million, and I was the only guy saying anything, other than the auctioneer. One would step on my toe, another would tap my calf with his book, and my eyes never left James Delahooke. I was saying "yep" as fast as I could, and I was the only one who knew who all three of the bidders were."

Another of Robertson's favorite moments came in 2001, when Michael Tabor's agent, Demi O'Byrne, squared off against Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum's representative, John Ferguson. The two engaged in a long pitched battle over a Kingmambo colt, prompting Collier to observe, "It's only a matter of determining what shade of blue the silks will be."

The colt eventually went to O'Byrne for $3 million.

Such ostentatious displays have not always attracted positive attention.

"The first or second year I was there, we had some protesters who were calling for the redistribution of wealth in America," Robertson remembered. "Just as John Finney was getting ready to make his announcements, they dropped a banner from the balcony, and they were ushered out. John, who was a great wit, said, 'Those people are protesting for the redistribution of wealth in America, and that's exactly what we're here for.' "

One of beneficiaries of that "redistribution" is Bertram Linder, who has sold yearlings at the Spa for 48 years. Now 87, he fondly recalls his first Saratoga sale in 1955.

"I had one of my yearlings out being shown to Max Hirsch by a fellow who I think was probably wearing shoes for the first time," Linder said. "The fellow didn't really know how to show, and I could tell from Mr. Hirsch's face that he was about to go away. So I went over myself, took the horse, and walked it for him. When I stopped in front of him, Hirsch said, 'You've been around horses before,' and I said, 'Yes, sir.' He said, 'Is this your first time at Saratoga?' And I said, 'Yes, sir.' He asked, 'Are you nervous?' And I said, 'Yes, sir!' He said. 'Well, relax, I'm going to buy your horse.' And he did, too, for $5,000.

"He bought a horse from me every year from then until he died," Linder added. "That last year, he came in a golf cart and just said, 'Bring out the one horse you think I should see.' "

This put some pressure on Linder to find the most suitable horse, but it was nothing compared with the pressure one well-known dowager put on him. The buyer, whom Linder chivalrously declines to identify, arrived in his shed row, explained that at her age she preferred to be direct and not waste time, and then said, "I will buy your yearling if you come with it."

"I kind of stuttered and explained that I was already married, and then later I told everyone up and down the shed row what had happened," Linder said. "Well, she wound up buying the horse anyway, and everyone thought I had taken the deal."

Linder also unwittingly helped some new owners get in the game. One afternoon during sales week, he spent some time at the racetrack making $2 bets that kept coming home winners. The people in the box next to him, who had been losing fistfuls of cash at the windows, took notice and asked him to pick one for them in the last race. Linder, startled, saw a horse he happened to know and picked him, despite the fact that his last race had been a steeplechase and his odds were long. Tongue in cheek, Linder explained that the horse would run well to prevent himself from having to go jumping again, and the fellows in the box bet the horse. He won.

"The least you can do is come buy a horse from me," Linder jokingly told the men.

"That night, after the sale, there they were at my barn," he recalled. "They said, 'Well, we just bought our first horse.' I couldn't believe it."

The story points up the special symbiosis between Saratoga's racetrack and sales, whereby people infected by the glamor and excitement of the track decide they have to have a horse now. Luckily for them, there happens to be an auction barely a block away.

"It's hugely beneficial," Collier said. "If you get a big maiden winner by a young sire across the street, it will immediately add luster to his yearlings at the sale. It's like spraying barbecue fuel on a fire."

Despite its moments of high drama, the Saratoga sale's predominant atmosphere is one of bucolic relaxation. That, too, works to the sale company's advantage.

"We are given the chance to sit under a tree in a deck chair with a consignor every afternoon and review where they are in the sale process," Collier said. "That's almost impossible to do at any other sale. You come to Saratoga with the idea of relaxing, and it's very difficult to raise your stress level there. Driving into Saratoga or flying into the Saratoga or Albany airport is like getting on a cruise ship."

Even Linder, in the hot seat for almost 50 years of selling yearlings at the Spa, agrees.

"Saratoga's sales and racetrack have something that almost doesn't exist anymore," he said. "It's a combination of special elements. Saratoga is a gathering of the clan, and they come from everywhere to be there. Millionaires looking at horses push their way through a crowd of people who might not be able to buy a hot dog. It's small and intimate, everyone is there, and pretty much anything can happen."

"Everything happens there," said Fasig-Tipton president Robertson. "We've had the lights go out, we've had floods. We've frozen to death up there, and we've gotten too hot. But it's still the place to go and be seen, and for three nights, it's the center of our game."