LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Tattersalls autumn horses in training auction opened Monday in Newmarket, England, with a jump in median despite downturns in gross and average.

The three-time winner Redford, by Bahri, topped Monday's session at 130,000 guineas, or about $223,860.

Stephen Hillen, as agent for Marwan Koukash, bought the bay colt from trainer Michael Bell's Fitzroy House Stables agency. Redford has won three of his 14 starts to date. He is a son of the Statoblest mare Ida Lupino and is one of two winners for the mare.

Exceeding, 9, ended his career with 14 wins in 42 starts and $550,701.P

ARCADIA, Calif. - There are no grand announcements when old geldings such as Exceeding leave the racetrack, as the 9-year-old did earlier this month at Santa Anita.

Instead, the California-bred Exceeding was quietly shipped to a farm in central California, where he has started his retirement. His absence will be felt in trainer Bill Spawr's stable and by Chuck Allen, Tom Acker, Jon Lindo, and Bob Verratti, the group that owned him at the end of his career.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Jockey Club's annual Reports of Mares Bred statistics, released Thursday for the 2009 breeding season, shows North America's Thoroughbred breeding activity has continued to decline, as expected.

Congaree, a leading second-crop sire and a Grade 1 stakes winner of more than $3.2 million, will relocate and stand the 2010 season at Highcliff Farm in New York. Owned by his breeders, Janice and Robert McNair, Congaree will stand for $7,500, according to a release by Highcliff.

The only horse to win back-to-back runnings of the Grade 1 Cigar Mile, Congaree won 10 graded stakes from seven furlongs to 1 1/4 miles.

Congaree will be leaving Adena Springs in Kentucky, where he had an advertised 2009 fee of $10,000.

Idiot Proof, a millionaire who set two track records on opposite sides of the country in 2007, has been retired from racing and will stand at Ballena Vista Farm in Ramona, Calif., in 2010, the farm announced earlier this week.

Idiot Proof ended his career with 5 wins in 17 starts and earnings of $1,294,484. He made the final start of his career in the Icecapade Stakes at Monmouth Park last month, finishing fourth.

The first man to hold the gavel at England's Tattersalls auction house was Richard Tattersall, in 1766, when the sales were held at London's Hyde Park Corner and the Thoroughbred was a relatively new creation.

Since then, the world's oldest equine auction firm has sold everything from dogs to foxes, world-record-priced Thoroughbreds to cab horses, and even the skeleton of the great racehorse and stallion Eclipse.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - For many employees of Overbrook Farm, the announcement that it would disperse its horses and cease operations was like a death in the family.

Founded by the late W. T. Young in 1972, Overbrook is most famous for standing Storm Cat, the leading sire who is now retired. Storm Cat will live out his days at the 2,300-acre property, Young's heirs have said, probably with Grade 2-winning gelding Clock Stopper as a companion. But the future is less certain for most of Overbrook's longtime staff, who will close the farm after the final dispersal phase in January.

Sheikh Hamdan al-Maktoum's Shadwell Estate Company paid $368,953 (220,000 guineas) for the session-topping yearling on Wednesday to close Book 2 at the Tattersalls October yearling sale in Newmarket, England.

A pair of colts sold for $433,000 (260,000 guineas) each during the second day of Book 2 selling at the Tattersalls October yearling sale in Newmarket, England, on Tuesday, providing a boost to the session's average price even as the median continued to plunge.

Sheikh Hamdan al-Maktoum's Shadwell Estate Company bought one of the yearling colts, a son of Invincible Spirit out of the With Approval mare Exclusive Approval. The other session-topper, a son of Selkirk out of the Sadler's Wells mare Eminencia, was purchased by Paul Cole, the British trainer.

Pulpit, the 15-year-old stallion who is 16th on the 2009 list of leading sires by earnings, will stand for $60,000 in 2010, down from $80,000 this year, according to Claiborne Farm, which stands the horse near Paris, Ky.

The reduction is one of several that Claiborne has applied to its stallion corps this year. Horse Greeley will stand this year for $6,500, down from $7,500 last year, and both Political Force and War Front will stand for $10,000, reduced from $12,500.