Maryland owner and breeder Sondra Bender has died at age 78, the Maryland Jockey Club announced Thursday.

Fasig-Tipton has cataloged 150 juveniles to its April 5 Texas 2-year-old sale at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Tex. That’s down from 167 last year.

The sale will take place at 11 a.m. Fasig-Tipton will conduct the sale’s under-tack preview on April 2 at 11 a.m., also at Lone Star Park.

Catalogs are available online now at www.fasigtipton.com, and print editions will be available in all Fasig-Tipton offices by Feb. 24. The catalog features such sires as Awesome Again, Curlin, Empire Maker, and Medaglia d’Oro.

Champion and noted sire Royal Academy, who gave 54-year-old jockey Lester Piggott a thrilling comeback victory in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Mile, has died in Australia, Coolmore Stud announced Wednesday. The Nijinsky II horse was 25 and had been pensioned at Coolmore Australia for the last two years, the global breeding operation said.

Coolmore’s announcement said the stallion “succumbed to the infirmities of old age.”

ARCADIA, Calif. – The California breeding market continues to favor mare owners, who have an increasing list of bargains available among potential stallions, according to the managers of two prominent farms.

With breeding season starting this week, farm managers are actively pursuing mares to book to their stallions, hoping that hints of growth in the economy and more racing incentives for California-breds will lead to more activity for breeding farms.

Valid Expectations has been around long enough now that it’s not just his runners who define him as a stallion.

“His daughters are making excellent broodmares,” said Danny Shifflett, farm manager for Lane’s End Texas in Hempstead. “There are several really top stakes horses out of Valid mares already, like Quantum Miss and She Digs Me.”

News coverage

• Uncle Mo leads new class of Kentucky sires - By Anne Peters

• Kentucky breeding industry doing more with less - By Glenye Cain Oakford

• Texas: Valid expectations still going strong - By Mary Rampellini

The young sire Old Forester has gotten off to a fast start at Canada’s T.C. Westmeath Stud in Shelburne, Ontario. In 2010, he was Canada’s leading freshman sire. Last year, with two racing-age crops, he led the rankings for sires of all-weather runners with $2,560,554 in progeny earnings, vaulting past Canada’s perennial leading sire, the late Bold Executive, who had $2,285,596. He also netted a $50,000 award from the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s Ontario division as the province’s top sire last season, again finishing ahead of Bold Executive, who died in 2011.

The successes of Curlin, Lookin At Lucky, and My Miss Aurelia tend to make us forget that, before these golden years as a sire of main-track heroes, Smart Strike was better known as a sire of turf runners. He returns to that realm as the leading turf sire of 2011, with earnings that put him ahead of younger upstart Kitten’s Joy.

Danehill dominated Australia and Europe for decades, named leading sire in Australia nine times, Britain and Ireland four times, and France two times. Now he adds his first broodmare sire title to that list.

It took a few days after the new year for the last earnings to trickle in and push Scat Daddy past Hard Spun as 2011’s leading freshman sire. He cut it close, but Lady of Shamrock and Swag Daddy’s stakes wins Dec. 30 and 31 made the difference. The final margin was $11,175.

Besides total progeny earnings, Scat Daddy also was the leading freshman sire by winners (29), stakes winners (5), and stakes horses (11).