LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Fasig-Tipton auction house and the New York Racing Association, who are co-hosting the Fasig-Tipton Festival of Racing Aug. 8-9 at Saratoga Race Course, will offer a $100,000 bonus to the first graduate of Fasig-Tipton's 2009 Saratoga select yearling sale who returns to win a 2010 graded stakes at the Spa.

If no 2009 yearling comes back to win a Saratoga graded stakes at 2 next year, the bonus will grow to $200,000 for the first yearling sold at the 2010 Saratoga select sale to win a 2011 graded stakes at Saratoga.

Fasig-Tipton has trimmed its Aug. 31 Texas summer yearling sale from two sessions to one this year with a catalog of 370 yearlings. The sale takes place at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Tex.

The two-day 2008 auction offered 443 yearlings, selling 281 for a total of $3,369,700, an average price of $11,992, and a median of $4,500. The gross was up 3 percent from the previous year's two-day sale of 241 yearlings. But the 2008 average and median were down by 12 percent and 27 percent, respectively. The 2008 buy-back rate of 37 percent was the same as in 2007.

Kafwain, the sire of The Pamplemousse, a leading 3-year-old earlier this year, has joined the stallion roster at Tommy Town Thoroughbreds in Santa Ynez, Calif., the farm announced earlier this week. Kafwain will stand for $5,000. In 2009, he stood for $6,500 at Hurstland Farm in Midway, Ky.

Tommy Town owners Tom and Debbie Stull purchased Kafwain from Darley Stud last fall, and moved him to Hurstland for the 2009 breeding season. According to Tommy Town manager Mike Allen, Kafwain was bred to 65 mares earlier this year. Allen thinks he will be bred to more mares in California.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Birdstone's classic season paid off in the auction ring Monday as his sole yearling at Fasig-Tipton's July select sale brought $400,000, becoming the day's top-priced horse at a session that saw a 24 percent decline in average and a 33 percent drop in median.

"He was a very nice colt, and Birdstone has blasted onto the sire scene with two classic winners," said John Ferguson, who bought the session topper, Hip No. 228, for Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum's Darley Stud.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Fasig-Tipton Kentucky's July select yearling sale here Monday and Tuesday leads off the summer auctions with expectations that the yearling market will not change much from 2008.

But at least one thing is already different: Fasig-Tipton's July select catalog is slimmer than last year's, with 494 horses versus 568 in 2008. Lower numbers, especially if buyers like the quality, could help protect the nation's first major select sale from downturns. But Fasig-Tipton officials would not go so far as to predict gains in a general economy that is still struggling.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - When the breeder and owner Terry Lovingier first saw Unbridled Meeting shortly after she was born in April 2007, he did not see a potential racehorse, but a filly he might give away.

When Lovingier saw Grace Upon Grace, he wanted to fast forward the calendar to 2009 and get the colt's career underway.

The Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association and the state's racing interests are calling for collective action to prevent legislators from using the sport's slot-machine revenue to help resolve Pennsylvania's $3.2 billion budget deficit.

Strong Hope, a two-time Grade 2 winner and the sire of 2009 stakes-winner Trophy Collector, will relocate to Eugene Melnyk's Winding Oaks Farm in Ocala, Fla., for the 2010 breeding season.

Strong Hope has stood at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky., since 2005. His advertised fee this year was $15,000. Melnyk has not yet announced the 9-year-old horse's fee for 2010.

Finder's Fee, a dual Grade 1 winner, has died after colic surgery, the manager of Claiborne Farm, Gus Koch, confirmed Wednesday.

A 12-year-old Storm Cat mare and Phipps Stable homebred, Finder's Fee died on July 6. Her final foal is a Bernardini filly born on April 11.

Finder's Fee was believed to be in foal to Tiznow when she died, Koch said. News of her death was first reported by Thoroughbred Times.

The Japan Racing Horse Association's two-day foal sale ended Wednesday with precipitous slides that suggest global recession is still keeping a damper on Thoroughbred sales.

The two-day foal auction's final session sold nine fewer yearlings than last year, but gross receipts for the 89 horses plummeted 36 percent to about $19,363,157. The final session's average price dropped 29 percent to about $217,563. The median slid 33 percent to land at approximately $157,894.