Eurosilver, a multiple graded stakes winner owned and bred by Buckram Oak Farm, has been retired after a hairline fracture was diagnosed in his left hind leg, his connections said Saturday.

Stallion plans have yet to be finalized, said Mohammed Moubarak, racing manager for Buckram Oak.

Eurosilver, 4, who won the Grade 2 Lane's End Breeders' Futurity in 2003 when trained by Nick Zito, suffered his injury when he finished sixth in the Grade 1 Whitney Handicap at Saratoga on Aug. 6. The injury was diagnosed at the Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington, Ky.

The New York Breeders' Sales Company's summer yearling sale ended Friday night in Saratoga with a $150,000 sale-topper but a 36-percent buy-back rate.

The two-night auction sold a total of 107 yearlings for $1,251,400, resulting in an average price of $11,695. The median price was $5,000.

The sale-topper at $150,000 was a Not for Love-Pentatonic filly that Dick Lossen bought from McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds, agent, at Thursday night's opening session.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Audrey Haisfield, who races under the name of NeverTell Racing, will relocate the stallions Doneraile Court, Medaglia d'Oro, and Marquetry from John Sikura's Hill 'n' Dale Farms in Lexington, Ky., to open her own stallion division.

The NeverTell stallion division will be known as Stonewall Farm and be located in Midway, Ky. Haisfield has hired former Damara Farm manager Bert Welker to run the stallion operation.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - What would a select yearling auction be without a sale-topping colt by Storm Cat? The most commercially accepted stallion in the world, Storm Cat is prized around the world not only as a sire of a high percentage of top-class stakes horses but also as the most desirable sire of stallions.

So when a big, good-looking son of Storm Cat out of a Grade 1 winner comes up for auction, all the long-ball hitters in the sales game give the youngster a very close look.

Topped by a Giant's Causeway colt at $1.1 million, New York-breds were well received at the Fasig-Tipton selected Saratoga yearling sale last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ten statebreds grossed $3.3 million for an average of $330,000, slightly above the overall sale average of $324,417.

European bloodstock agent Demi O'Byrne, whose patrons Michael Tabor and Mrs. John Magnier raced Giant's Causeway, signed the ticket for the yearling, who was the top-priced colt on the first night of the sale.

A rapidly changing landscape for yearling sales in California has given Tuesday's northern California yearling sale at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton a boost in catalog size.

This year, the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association is not holding a yearling sale at Del Mar, but has merged that sale with the Barretts October yearling sale. To avoid a conflict with the October sale, Tuesday's Pleasanton sale has been moved forward six weeks from its position on the 2004 calendar.

Ten years ago, a filly named Secret Prospect launched a 2-year-old campaign at Monmouth Park that resulted in a Maryland-bred championship. On Aug. 6 at the beautiful resort track, her 2-year-old daughter, Livermore Valley, made strides toward her own title.

Phil Hronec has passed a time marker: It' has been 40 months since he became the general manager for Eugene and Laura Melnyk's Ocala breeding and farm operation. The Melnyk's Winding Oaks Farm has a storied past. It was initially developed in the 1960's by John Nerud for the McKnight family, who named it Tartan Farms. When the McKnight family divested in the late l980's, Harry T. Mangurian Jr. bought most of the acreage and renamed it Mockingbird Farm.

Mike Lakow, the former New York Racing Association racing secretary who was fired with three other people last month in a NYRA shake-up, has joined John Sikura's Hill 'n' Dale Farms as its general manager.

Lakow, who served at NYRA for 10 years, will start in his new position at the Lexington, Ky., stud farm on Aug. 22.

Sikura cited horsemen's support for Lakow after his firing as a positive factor that caught his attention.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Heading into the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, many auction participants openly wondered whether such "boutique" sales were becoming anachronistic. Keeneland has dropped its select July sale and Fasig-Tipton trimmed the Saratoga sale from three days to two this year, even as Walmart-style auctions such as Keeneland September and Fasig-Tipton July have grown. But if highly select summer yearling sales are going out of style, someone forgot to tell the buyers.