LEXINGTON, Ky. - Keeneland’s September yearling sale, the world’s largest Thoroughbred yearling auction, gets underway Sunday night amid hopes that a new format and bargain-seeking buyers will help sellers profit on the last crop of yearlings bred on relatively high stud fees before the market bubble collapsed.

According to court documents filed Friday in a Jacksonville, Fla., bankruptcy court, Stonewall Farm owner Audrey Haisfield intends to put the Kentucky farm property, totaling about 232 acres in Midway, for $8.4 million.

An exclusive right-to-sell contract with real estate agent Bill Justice, which must be approved by the court, calls for three tracts at 3478, 3566, and 3768 Midway Road in Woodford County, to be listed. The listing period runs from Sept. 7 through Dec. 6, 2010, but could be extended.

The New York Breeders’ Sales Company has canceled its fall breeding stock sale, citing “complications arising from scheduling.”

The auction initially had been set for Oct. 10 but will now take what a company release called “a one-year hiatus.”

Also taking place in the region in early October is Fasig-Tipton Midlantic’s Oct. 5-6 Eastern fall yearling sale in Timonium, Md.

“It is unfortunate that the sale will not be held this year, but I fully expect we will bring the sale back next year,”

John Werner Kluge, the owner of Morven Stud who campaigned Grade 1 winners Unaccounted For and Buy the Firm, has died in Virginia at age 95.

A German immigrant who made his fortune in media and advertising, Kluge developed the Metromedia telecommunications conglomerate and, in the mid-1980s, sold Rupert Murdoch the group of television stations that ultimately became the Fox Network. In 1988, Kluge purchased the historic Morven Stud property, birthplace of Hall of Famer Shuvee, among others.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Phipps family, owners of some of the world’s most productive and coveted bloodstock, will sell 16 of its mares and racing-age fillies at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale, Ogden Mills “Dinny” Phipps announced Thursday.

Claiborne Farm will consign the horses on the Phippses’ behalf.

A Jacksonville, Fla., bankruptcy court judge’s order has cleared the way for Stonewall Farm stallion Da Stoops to be auctioned.

Lost Soldier, sire of 2005 sprint champion Lost in the Fog, died Tuesday at Buck Pond Farm in Versailles, Ky., apparently of a heart attack.

A Danzig horse, Lost Soldier was 20 and was advertised this season with a $5,000 stud fee.

“It looks like he went down for a nap and simply didn’t get back up,” said Doug Arnold, who owns Buck Pond and also owned Lost Soldier. “He didn’t have a mark on him. There were no signs of any struggle.”

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The average and gross both sagged during the select session of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s 2010 yearling sale at the Woodbine Sales Pavilion on Tuesday.

A total of 128 head were listed as sold, averaging $28,802 on a gross of $3,686,700. The average was down 4.4 percent and the gross declined 21 percent from last year, when 155 yearlings brought $4,672,000, while averaging $30,142.

Seventy-nine yearlings were listed as not sold, compared to 68 in 2009.

In the newly formatted Keeneland September yearling sale, the auction company switches to a smallish first book of truly select horses, reminiscent of the old Keeneland July sale, which was discontinued following the 2002 edition.

Book 1 of the auction, which covers Sept. 12 and 13, has 105 yearlings cataloged during the opening chapter of the 14-session sale and 106 cataloged to the second day.

In 1986, Ben Walden Jr. was a young man in a hurry. At age 28, he had just opened the doors at Vinery. Within a decade, it would become one of Kentucky’s busiest stallion stations with a 30-horse roster. With horses such as Black Tie Affair, Cryptoclearance, Lost Code, and Red Ransom, Walden pushed traditional limits by breeding to 100-mare books. That strategy brought in more income and put a bumper crop of horses by Vinery stallions on the racetrack.