In a deal brokered by Michael Slezak, stakes-placed Sawtooth Mountain has retired from racing and will enter stud at Wayne George’s Circle G Farms in Atoka, Okla.

Grade 1 winner E Z’s Gentleman will enter stud this year at Swifty Farms in Seymour, Ind.

John O’Meara’s Milestone Farm bought the 7-year-old Yankee Gentleman horse for $37,000 at the Keeneland January sale and will stand him at Swifty alongside Mancini, a Mr. Prospector half-brother to Unbridled’s Song that O’Meara also owns.

Thoroughbred owner and breeder Paul Saylor has agreed to match any financial gift to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, up to $50,000 in total, as part of a fundraising challenge to benefit the charity for retired racehorses.

Funds donated to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation Saylor Challenge will go to support the TRF’s herd of more than 1,000 former racehorses. Donors also may earmark their funds for “Olivia’s Herd,” a group of TRF horses who require special care or feeding due to physical or age-related issues.

Sci Fi Kin, the dam of Grade 2 winner Pretty Unusual and carrying a full sibling to that runner, brought $60,000 Monday at the Barretts January mixed sale, the highest price on a day that saw gains in average and median.

Ron Stolich bought Sci Fi Kin, a 13-year-old Siphon daughter of the graded-winning Time to Explode mare Akinemod. She was pregnant to Unusual Heat, sire of both Pretty Unusual and Akinemod’s other stakes performer, stakes-placed Jax El. Harris Farms, agent, was the consignor.

Scientists in Ireland and Britain believe a genetic variation in the myostatin “speed gene” that promotes sprint ability entered the Thoroughbred breed via a single native British mare about 300 years ago, according to new research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. And as precocity and sprinting ability became more prized, the gene’s presence has proliferated in the breed since the mid-1950’s, the research team has found.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Arnold Pessin, a longtime Kentucky veterinarian who also was former manager and partner in the former Dueling Grounds racetrack, died Friday at age 83.

Pessin founded the 500-acre Winchester Farm near Lexington and stood Olden Times, the 1982 leading juvenile and broodmare sire. In partnership with trainer Rex Ellsworth, he also built the Kentucky Training Center on Paris Pike in Lexington. The partners later leased the facility to Fasig-Tipton, which first conducted auctions there in 1970 before building its own sales complex at Newtown Paddocks on Newtown Pike.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Rachel Alexandra and her first foal, a 125-pound Curlin colt born Jan. 22, were “doing well” one day after the birth, Stonestreet Farms said Monday morning on its website.

“For the next week, the focus will be on allowing Rachel and her foal to adjust to one another,” an update on the site, www.stonestreetfarms.com, said. “We thank everyone for their warm thoughts and amazing response to this special event.”

Rachel Alexandra, the 2009 Horse of the Year, gave birth Sunday in Kentucky to a 125-pound colt by Curlin, the 2007 and 2008 Horse of the Year, according to a press release. It was Rachel Alexandra's first foal.

The bay colt was born at 2:40 p.m. at Stonestreet Farm, near Lexington. He took his first steps 1 1/2 hours later. Stonestreet farm manager Gary Megibben said both mare and foal were doing well and that "Rachel is a natural mother, and took to the colt immediately."

Barretts starts its 2012 sale season with a one-day January mixed sale in Pomona, Calif., on Monday that comprises 2-year-olds, breeding stock, horses of racing age, and yearlings. The sale begins at 11 a.m.

“The January sale is for us a service sale,” said Kim Lloyd, vice president of sales at Barretts. “It’s not like a March [2-year-olds in training] sale where you have great expectations. We expect this sale to be pretty good and kind of solid.”

The New York Thoroughbred Breeders board of directors met Jan. 19 and unanimously re-elected Barry Ostrager to another two-year term as board president.

The board’s vice-president Tom Gallo III and secretary/treasurer Vivien Malloy will serve the second of two-year terms in those positions in 2012.