Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro appeared "more comfortable" on Monday, his surgeon said, two days after an infection prompted his surgical team to replace the compression plate and many of the screws that have been holding his shattered right hind leg together since May 21. He remains in intensive care at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center equine hospital, and the surgical team reported Monday afternoon that his vital signs were normal after the Saturday surgery and a sixth cast change on Monday.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - With the first stakes for juveniles at Belmont having been run in the last week, the early results from the quick and the precocious are now coming in steadily.

One of the big early winners among the freshman sires of 2006 is Officer, who has 6 winners from 12 starters to date (5 debut winners) and is the country's leading freshman sire.

Officer himself was a precocious and immensely talented juvenile who won his first five races in a row at 2, including the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes, and started as the heavy favorite in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

The Ocala Breeders' Sales Company has announced a major change in its 2007 schedule of 2-year-olds in training sales. The selected sale that had been scheduled for Feb. 6, usually held at Calder Race Course, will be transferred to the OBS home site in Ocala and delayed a week to Feb 13. The rationale behind this change is that Super Bowl XLI will be played on Feb. 4 at Dolphin Stadium, which is located less than a mile from Calder Race Course, and the crowds in the area would make it hard to conduct a sale two days later.

A pair of classy New York-breds, Funny Cide and Behaving Badly, captured graded stakes races during the Independence Day holiday weekend.

Sackatoga Stable's champion Funny Cide, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes in 2003, won the Grade 3 Dominion Day Handicap at Woodbine Race Track near Toronto.

Funny Cide, a son of Distorted Humor, sent his career earnings to $3,432,628, based on a record of 10-6-6 from 31 starts.

The California Cup program will be run on Saturday, Oct. 28 this year, a week before the Breeders' Cup is run at Churchill Downs in Kentucky.

This will be the first time since 2000 the California Cup program, the showcase day for statebreds, has been run a week before the Breeders' Cup . In recent years, the California Cup has been held on the weekend following the Breeders' Cup. A recent exception occurred in 2004 when the California Cup was held in mid-October.

Colonial Downs's Brookmeade Stakes on July 1 could hardly have been more exciting for Virginia-based breeders Jill Gordon-Moore and her husband Carlos "Ned" Moore.

The Moores' hopes soared as their homebred Smart Kiss vaulted to an early lead and showed the way for her 11 rivals in the 1 1/16-mile turf race for Virginia-bred fillies and mares.

"Then, in midstretch, I saw she was getting beat," said Gordon-Moore. "I felt a whole lot better when I saw the horse coming on to win was Debbie Sue."

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro underwent a cast change Wednesday at the University of Pennsylvania's equine hospital in Kennett Square, Pa., in an effort to relieve discomfort, his veterinary team reported Thursday.

It was the third cast change since surgery to repair the colt's shattered right hind leg May 21, the day after he was injured in the Preakness. The procedure Wednesday was to replace a cast he received on Monday.

Dr. Dean Richardson, who performed surgery Monday on Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro to replace a pair of bent screws and implant three new ones in the colt's injured right hind leg, said that the new repairs were the result of force and motion in the affected area and do not signal a problem in the healing process.

Barbaro's X-rays continue to show bone healing about six weeks after his breakdown in the Preakness Stakes, a positive sign.

Monmouth

Yes It's True (by Is It True) was a multiple stakes winner at age 2 and 3, and has become a dependable sire of first-out winners since his first crop hit the races a few years ago. Blessed with high speed, his offspring are precocious and win their first or second starts at an amazing clip. On June 24, You Asked, a 2-year-old filly making her debut against some well-regarded juvenile fillies, showed the customary speed of her sire to win a five-furlong maiden race, paying $13.60.

LAS VEGAS - Bushfire, who had won the Acorn and Ashland stakes and Florida Oaks, moved to the head of the 3-year-old filly division with her victory in the Mother Goose Stakes last weekend. But her reign may be short-lived.

Pine Island, who was making just her third start, finished gamely up the rail to be second, beaten three-quarters of a length, in the Mother Goose and may very well be the filly they all have to watch the second half of the year.