LEXINGTON, Ky. - With a pair of Grade 1 winners in the Mother Goose and the Suburban Handicap last weekend, Taylor Made Farm stallion Unbridled's Song is realizing the goals that the Taylors envisioned for the horse.

The sire of more than 50 stakes winners from his first eight crops to race, Unbridled's Song has gone from being a promising young sire to one of the most commercially successful stallions in the country.

This elevation of his profile and proof of the stallion's success have made a difference in the quality of his mates.

Bill Jones got into the Thoroughbred racing business in an unorthodox way. Just over 20 years ago he had a farm in Mansfield, Ontario, bulging with Black Angus cattle, and a company in the oil business in Toronto.

"I won this horse - I think it was in a card game - and I didn't know what to do with it," said Jones.

While golfing one day, he mentioned to one of the course employees, Theresa Shiel, that he had a racehorse. Shiel introduced Jones to her father, Dan, a trainer at Fort Erie.

Florida's 2-year-olds in training sales, five in all, concluded with the Ocala Breeders' Sales June sale on June 20. The numbers generated by these sales were solid - not quite record-breaking numbers, but close. For many of the pinhookers who sold juveniles in one or more of these sales, a primary source of their yearlings is the Fasig-Tipton yearling sale on July 16-17.

Peter and Ashley Schaeffer have become overnight celebrities in the horse-oriented community of Woodbine, Md.

"People stop us and say, 'Aren't you the ones who won the Maryland Horse Breeders Association Yearling Show?'" said Ashley Schaeffer. "We're shocked that this has happened to us."

Winning the grand championship at the 73rd annual MHBA show, judged by trainer Tom Albertrani last Sunday at Timonium Fairgrounds, brought an added measure of fame to the Schaeffers because they did it with the first horse they exhibited in the event.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It may not be long before the highest-priced 2-year-old from this week's Barretts summer sale makes her racetrack debut.

An Aldebaran filly purchased for $120,000 by trainer Dan Hendricks, agent for Frank Scardino, was already in training at Hendricks's stable at Hollywood Park on Thursday. Hendricks is hoping the filly can start during the early weeks of the Del Mar meeting, which begins July 18.

Invasor is by Candy Stripes, who sired the Grade 1 winner Different and was broodmare sire of Pacific Classic winner Candy Ride.P

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The retirement of the international champion Invasor due to a sesamoid injury prompts the question: "What's next for the 2006 Horse of the Year?"

Obviously a top-class racehorse, Invasor successfully faced repeated challenges on the racetrack but now must meet a different set of criteria for breeders and potential stallion season buyers.

Catienus has a commanding lead among New York sires at the halfway point of the season.

With progeny earnings of $2 million, Catienus, a son of Storm Cat, could be on the way to his second consecutive state title.

Among Catienus's six stakes winners active in 2007, Precious Kitten is his leading lifetime earner at $449,668 and is the winner of the Grade 3 Gallorette Handicap at Pimlico.

His other open stakes winner this year is Talent Search, winner of the Jim McKay and second in the Gradeo3 Maryland Breeders' Cup Sprint.

Paul Bulmahn was recently cited in the Thoroughbred Times as one of the industry's 10 to watch. A tour of his emerging 2,500-acre facility in Ocala, Fla., lends currency to that citation.

Bulmahn is a 64-year-old oil magnate from Texas. But it is not who he is that warrants the spotlight, it is what he is doing and what he hopes to accomplish that stirs the industry's attention.

LAS VEGAS - Watch out, Citronnade, Wait a While, and Honey Ryder - there is a new player in the filly-and-mare turf division. While there are dozens of fillies imported from overseas every year, Makderah may be something special.

Much can be said for the blue-collar sires, those who grind it out year after year, offering breeders a good chance at success for a modest price and occasionally producing a standout. Waquoit fits the profile exactly.

Age finally caught up with the massively built Waquoit at 24. A nearly 17-hand gray son of Relaunch who made his career at Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, Md., Waquoit was euthanized on June 14 due to infirmities of old age.