No Nay Never’s trans-Atlantic jaunt to Royal Ascot and smashing performance in the Group 2 Norfolk Stakes on June 20 proved to be one of the more pleasant surprises of the tradition-rich, early-summer meeting.

For a three-time leading American sire, the late, great Danzig left a surprisingly light footprint on the domestic sire list.

Danzig’s English-trained sons Danehill and Green Desert both have established vibrant, thriving male lines abroad to the degree that male-line descendants of Danzig dominated the prestigious 2013 Royal Ascot meeting, winning 14 of the 30 races at the five-day meet. Danehill earned multiple sire championships in both Europe and Australia, and his sons Dansili and Danehill Dancer also are champion sires.

J. Michael O’Farrell Jr. moved to Ocala, Fla., from Maryland in 1956 at age 8. That year, Needles became the first Florida-bred to win the Kentucky Derby, and it was when O’Farrell’s father, Joseph, became part of the budding breeding program in Florida.

Michael O’Farrell has been around horses ever since, breeding them, raising them, training them, and selling them at the 2-year-old auctions in Ocala that his father helped establish.

Darwin, the highest-priced 2-year-old to sell at public auction in 2012, was victorious in his first outing for new trainer Aidan O’Brien on Wednesday, his first start in nearly eight months, winning a race at Naas Racecourse in Ireland.

The 3-year-old Big Brown colt began his career in the U.S., generating plenty of buzz after the Coolmore partnership secured him for $1.3 million at the Fasig-Tipton Florida selected 2-year-olds in training sale, topping the sale and the juvenile market.

Wasted Tears, the multiple Grade  2 winner who foaled a colt by Malibu Moon in January, is back in foal to the same stallion, said her owner, Bart Evans. The colt was the first foal for Wasted Tears, who is based at Stonehaven in Versailles, Ky.

“She’s basking in motherhood,” said Evans, who also bred and trained Wasted Tears.

Thoroughbred Placement Resources, Inc. (TPR) has received a Rescuing Racers Initiative Grant from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

TPR, based out of Maryland, is a 501(c)(3) charity that transitions and retrains racehorses for other disciplines and strives to improve the reputation of the Thoroughbred by providing education and support.

Belmont’s Grade 1 Mother Goose Stakes brought the 3-year-old filly division back to center stage last weekend, and Close Hatches’ dominant 7 1/4-length win over heavily favored Dreaming of Julia ensured that the overall pecking order in the upper rungs of the division would remain unsettled heading into the midsummer racing schedule.

Palace Episode, a Group 1 winner and freshman sire, had his first winner on Sunday when Ponthieu broke his maiden by three lengths at Aix le Bains in France.

Ponthieu, a 2-year-old colt, completed the 1,200-meter (about six-furlong) race in 1:12.50 over turf labeled as soft to win in his seventh start. Bred in France by Haras de Beauvoir, Ponthieu is out of the Brief Truce mare Piste Sauvage.

Since he purchased historic Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Ky., in 2004, B. Wayne Hughes has brought the farm back to prominence as a stallion operation and helped revolutionize the stallion business, too.

Owning and breeding Thoroughbreds is supposed to be fun. If it wasn’t, Janis Whitham wouldn’t be doing it.

It’s fun to watch a horse you own and bred, out of a homebred mare at that, break his maiden at Churchill Downs on the undercard of the Stephen Foster Handicap, as Lent did for Whitham in the evening’s fourth race.