LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Lane's End Farm stallion Smart Strike had three Grade 1 winners at Belmont on Sunday. They were Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Curlin, Turf Classic winner English Channel, and Vosburgh winner Fabulous Strike. Not only is the stallion's number of Grade 1 winners on a single day an amazing feat, but his winners were successful in races at six furlongs (Vosburgh), 10 furlongs (Jockey Club Gold Cup), and 12 furlongs (Turf Classic).

Bucksplasher died this past week at Noel and Bobby Hickey's Irish Acres Farm in Ocala, Fla. The chestnut stallion with the white blaze and two white socks died at the ripe age of 30. And with his death ends an era in Florida breeding.

Overbrook Farm stallion Cape Canaveral will relocate from Kentucky to Canada after being sold to Highfield Stock Farm in Alberta.

Highfield would not disclose what it paid for the 11-year-old Mr. Prospector horse and has not announced a stud fee. Cape Canaveral stood at Overbrook this year for $7,500.

If it seems like everywhere you turn there is an offspring of Langfuhr winning, you would not be far off in that thinking.

And when The Niagara Queen scored a determined half-length win in the Flaming Page Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf at Woodbine last Sunday, the 4-year-old became the 50th stakes winner from just seven crops to race for the Canadian-bred sire.

Yearlings will be in the spotlight Monday in Timonium, Md., when the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern fall yearling sale gets under way at 10 a.m. at the Maryland State Fairgrounds's sale pavilion.

The three-day sale, which in the past two years has yielded such horses as 2007 Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes winner Dominican and current 2-year-old Maryland-bred stakes winner Jet Run, is not quite as large as in recent years, but still boasts a hefty 903 yearlings in the catalog. Of that total, 208 are Maryland-breds.

By Thursday evening, John Brocklebank had been back to his Utah home for two days, fresh from a two-week stay at the Keeneland yearling sale.

He said he had yet to take his suitcases out of the car. There was little need to. Brocklebank was scheduled to go back on the road this weekend, heading toward Pomona, Calif., for Tuesday's Barretts October yearling sale.

"Life in the fast lane, sometimes," he said jokingly.

Big Truck and Expect the End have risen to the top of the juvenile ranks among New York-breds following important stakes wins last Sunday at Belmont Park.

Building upon his impressive first-out victory at Saratoga on Aug. 23, Eric Fein's Big Truck captured the $100,000 Bertram F. Bongard Stakes at seven furlongs.

Bred by A. Lakin and Sons, Big Truck is the first stakes winner from the first crop of hot young New York sire Hook and Ladder.

The Bongard runner-up, Spanky Fischbein, is also by Hook and Ladder, who has six juvenile winners.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The 14-year-old Forty Niner stallion Distorted Humor continues to add to his stature as one of the best sires in the world, and the result of the Brooklyn Handicap shows why. Distorted Humor's high-class son Any Given Saturday won the Grade 2 stakes, and the sire's progressive Helsinki was third, the same place he filled behind division leader Street Sense in the Travers Stakes last month.

Florida's success as a source of the solid stakes horse has, more often than not, been built upon stallions with modest stud fees. That is, those sires who can get you the profitable horse and on occasion a money-making graded stakes winner, and get the job done for a fee of $7,500 or less.

The recent Super Derby winner Going Ballistic is a good example. He is by Lite the Fuse, who stood at Adena Springs South for $7,500 before moving on to stand in Pennsylvania.

Vivien G. Malloy has been recognized by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association as New York's breeder of the year for 2006.

She was selected by New York Thoroughbred Breeders Inc. for the honor. She and her husband, Henry, a retired insurance broker, own Edition Farm near Waccabuc, N.Y., one of two farms they own.

Malloy's first taste of New York racing goes back to the days of the great Whirlaway, whom she saw when her grandfather took her to Empire City Race Track in 1942.