LEXINGTON, Ky. - Fasig-Tipton's July select yearling sale got the yearling auction season off to a good start. The two-day sale featured a slimmer catalog this year with just 472 lots, as compared with last year's record 672, and that formula worked well for the company.

By the time the hammer fell for the last time Tuesday evening, the auction had set sale records for average price at $115,954 and median price at $90,000. The gross, predictably, had gone down because of the decreased number of offerings and finally finished at $35,598,000 for 307 yearlings.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Fasig-Tipton Kentucky's July yearling sale didn't get another million-dollar lot on Tuesday, but that was fine with Scott Guenther.

LAS VEGAS - When Johannesburg won the 2001 Breeders' Cup Juvenile, it capped off an unprecedented 2-year-old season. Johannesburg won Grade 1 or Group 1 races in England, France, Ireland, and the United States.

Strategic Mission, sire of Grade 2 winner Showing Up, is returning to Gainesway Farm in Lexington, Ky., for the 2007 season.

The 11-year-old Mr. Prospector horse began his stud career at Gainesway but has been standing at Liberty Stud in New York since 2004 under a lease deal between the farm and Strategic Mission's owners, Gainesway and Live Oak Stud. His success with such runners as Showing Up and stakes winner Miss Savannah Rose from just 19 racing-age foals has bought him a return ticket to the Bluegrass.

Colonial Downs

Strategic Mission, sire of Grade 2 winner Showing Up, is returning to Gainesway Farm in Lexington for the 2007 season. An 11-year-old Mr. Prospector horse, Strategic Mission began his stud career at Gainesway but has been standing at Liberty Stud in New York since 2004 under a lease deal between the farm and Strategic Mission's owners, Gainesway and Live Oak Stud. His success with such runners as Showing Up and stakes-winners Miss Savannah Rose from just 19 racing-age foals has bought him a return ticket to Gainesway.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Forestry set the Thoroughbred auction market alight this spring at the Fasig-Tipton Calder select 2-year-old sale, where his son The Green Monkey set a world record auction price of $16 million. If Fasig-Tipton Kentucky's July select sale on Monday was any indication, Forestry will be hot in the 2006 yearling season, too.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The new sire showcase at Fasig-Tipton's July select sale of yearlings does more than offer a venue for selling the yearlings from the first or second crop of their sires. It also provides the first look at an elite sampling of the first-crop yearlings by some of the most intriguing and most famous young stallions in the breed.

Among the famed young sires with their first yearlings available at auction are Empire Maker, Vindication, Aldebaran, and Sky Mesa.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Fasig-Tipton Kentucky kicks off the yearling sale season in Lexington on Monday with a slimmed down catalog and a tighter selection process for its yearlings. Company officials hope that the smaller group of horses and the sale's record of producing winners will result in gains at the two-day auction.

Last year, the Fasig-Tipton July yearling sale was coming off a record season. But the 2005 sale catalog ballooned to a record 672 horses, and the extra offerings did not help the auction maintain its momentum from 2004. The result was declines across the board.

Nine years after Best of Friends made her career debut in a $20,000 claimer at Woodbine, her son Edenwold won the Queen's Plate on June 25, the first leg of Canada's Triple Crown and the most prestigious race for Canadian-bred 3-year-olds.

By Southern Halo, Edenwold is now favored to win the second leg, the Prince of Wales Stakes, on Sunday at Fort Erie.

Edenwold was co-bred by Gail Wood and Bill Diamant, whose wife, Vicki Pappas, claimed Best of Friends for $10,000 from her fourth start, Sept. 4, 1997.