Etc. . . .

The final rating for ABC's two-hour Belmont Stakes broadcast last Saturday dropped 12 percent from last year's race to its lowest level since 2000, according to figures released by ABC on Thursday. The rating, a 2.9, down from a 3.3, was the lowest since the rating for the broadcast was a 2.8 in 2000. . . . Guy de Rothschild, the patriarch of a French banking dynasty and a major horse breeder in France, died Tuesday in Paris at the age of 98. De Rothschild built back his family's breeding business after World War II, when most of his father's mares were confiscated by the Nazi regime, and won the French Derby as an owner in 1977 with Crystal Palace.