Despite a strong opening session that produced a sale-record top price of $425,000, the Barretts winter mixed sale in Pomona, Calif., closed Tuesday evening with declines across the board.

The Barretts winter mixed auction in Pomona, Calif., got off to a good start Monday with a $425,000 session-topper and increased gross and average.

At Monday's session, the first of two days' selling, Grade 2 stakes winner Taste of Paradise easily brought the day's highest price of $425,000. Purchased by David Bloom, Taste of Paradise, winner of last year's San Diego Handicap, was consigned by Berkey Bloodstock Services, agent. He was sold to dissolve a partnership and was cataloged as a racing or stallion prospect.

LAS VEGAS - This is Part 6 of a series on the 2004 freshman sires, with particular emphasis on how to play their offspring. Listed alphabetically, the sires are followed by their pedigree and the state or country where they stand.

Kinghaven Farms in Ontario, one of Canada's most important Thoroughbred farms, will close its Thoroughbred operation by the end of the year, according to a report in The Blood-Horse.

Kinghaven owner David Willmot told the trade publication that he will remain a Thoroughbred breeder and keep his own mares but will board those mares at another operation. Willmot and his family will continue to live at Kinghaven.

In recent years, Kinghaven Farms has operated largely as a boarding farm for clients and stands no stallions.

Susan Annette Saxon Hundley, co-owner of Saxony Farm in Versailles, Ky., with her husband Bruce, died of cancer at her home on Saturday. She was 62.

Saxony Farm, a family-run Thoroughbred breeding and cattle farm, raised a number of stakes winners, most notably Arazi, the 1991 Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner and 2-year-old champion, for longtime Saxony client Ralph Wilson Jr.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Keeneland July sale, once the pinnacle of the select yearling sale season, has been canceled for the second year in a row. The Keeneland Association in Lexington announced Friday that it would again offer select yearlings only in September this season.

Keeneland sales director Geoffrey Russell said that "Keeneland and consignors agreed to meet annually to reconsider the possibility of returning the July sale to the schedule."

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Vindication, 2002's champion juvenile, may not be in training anymore, but he's still busy. These days, he's in training for his new profession as a stallion at Hill 'n' Dale Farm in Lexington.

Vindication, who will stand for $50,000, arrived at the farm late in the summer after owner Satish Sanan and trainer Bob Baffert determined there wasn't enough time to bring the colt back from a suspensory injury for the Breeders' Cup Classic. Since then, Vindication's constant companion has been Aidan O'Meara, the farm's 26-year-old stallion manager.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Second of June confirmed his superiority over Silver Wagon, last year's Hopeful Stakes winner, with an emphatic victory in the Jan. 17 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park. They have met twice, with Second of June winning each time, the second even more impressively than the first.

Because he has a name that repeats his date of birth, Second of June is widely known as the youngest classic hope from this year's crop of 3-year-olds, and he may be the youngest colt in decades with a serious following for the classics.

Tom Ventura, general manager and director of sales for the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co., anticipated a good winter mixed sale - and he got it. The two-day consignors' preferred part of the annual OBS January mixed sale, held Jan. 19 and 20, generated robust statistics in just about every category.

The gross of $5.78 million for 290 lots was well above last year's $3.19 million for 198 lots. The overall average jumped by 23.6 percent to $19,925. The buy-back rate slipped from roughly one out of three last year to one out of four this year.

In 2003, Maryland had one of the nation's top-ranked sires, a deep group of 61 stakes winners, and a repeat performance by the state's leading breeders. The following is a list of the year's top Maryland performers:

Leading breeders: Sondra and Howard Bender