LAS VEGAS - Unbridled's Song is proving to be as impressive a stallion as he was a racehorse.

burst upon the racing season as a 2-year-old in 1995, winning the Breeders' Cup Juvenile in a stirring battle over Hennessy. From the first crop of Unbridled, a champion at 3 when he captured the Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic, Unbridled's Song won the Florida Derby by 5 3/4 lengths in a tour de force over a stellar field that included Editor's Note (Belmont Stakes winner), Skip Away (Horse of the Year), and Louis Quatorze (Preakness winner).

The Japan Racing Horse Association's two-day July select foal sale on Hokkaido got under way Monday without breaking last year's top-price record, but the auction opened with gains on last year's first day.

Turk O Witz, dam of Grade 1 winners Mr Purple and Queens Court Queen, died June 14 at Darby Dan Farm near Lexington, Ky. A 26-year-old Stop the Music mare, Turk O Witz, was euthanized because of the infirmities of old age, a farm official said.

Turk O Witz's best foals to date are millionaire Mr Purple, winner of the 1996 Santa Anita Derby and four other stakes, and Queens Court Queen, whose six stakes victories included the Grade 1 Santa Margarita Invitational and Santa Maria handicaps in 1995.

The profile of New York sire Lycius continues to rise in the wake of Palladio's victory in the Grade 2 Ohio Derby last weekend.

Palladio, who added the $350,000 Ohio Derby to his score in the Victoria Park Stakes three weeks earlier at Woodbine, is the 30th known stakes winner for Lycius.

He is also the 13th group or graded stakes winner for the stallion, whose progeny earnings are more than $1 million for 2005 and more than $13.7 million for his career.

Janie Roper, like so many women of her generation, has made it in what used to be a man's occupation. Roper is a bloodstock agent who specializes in taking yearlings to market. She won't have her shingle out at next week's Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July yearling sale, because she's home at her Ocala, Fla., farm prepping 46 for the August Ocala Breeders' Sales yearling sales.

It seems it was meant to be that Desert Radiance was going to produce a Queen's Plate winner for breeder Jeff Begg and his family's Windways Farm.

On two occasions, Begg tried to sell Desert Radiance, a stakes-winning Desert Wine mare, at auction, and both times he bought her back, unhappy with the bids he was getting for her.

On June 26, Desert Radiance's seventh foal, Wild Desert, won the 146th Queen's Plate and is going to be odds-on to win the second jewel of the Canadian Triple Crown, the Prince of Wales Stakes at Fort Erie, on July 17.

Jazz Club, a multiple graded stakes winner of $417,687 who stands at Maryland Stallion Station, became the state's first freshman sire to get a winner this year when Maddy's Our Girl dominated a maiden race at Delaware Park on July 6.

Jazz Club, a 10-year-old son of Dixieland Band, has 38 foals of racing age. Maddy's Our Girl, bred and owned by William M. Rickman, was her sire's third starter.

Rickman has been the stallion's biggest supporter and bred 11 mares to him in 2002. Maddy's Our Girl, a May foal, is out of the stakes-placed Rollicking mare Hay Roll.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Cesario became the first Japanese-bred racer to win a Grade 1 stakes in the United States with a smashing triumph in the American Oaks at Hollywood Park. Running 10 furlongs in 1:59.03, Cesario held off the previously unbeaten Melhor Ainda, who was the only filly to close on her through the stretch.

Although Cesario's trainer went on the record encouraging other Japanese owners to race in the States, there is not likely to be a stampede of Japanese-bred racehorses to courses in America, considering the extremely rich purses they can run for at home.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Owner and breeder Ken Ramsey has had his share of downs in the past year, but, as he told the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers Club in Lexington last Tuesday, he will take the bad with the good in his favorite sport.

Early this year, the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority fined him $25,000 for offering to pay a rival owner $1,000 to scratch a horse from a race. This spring, his trainer, Dale Romans, was hit with a quarantine during a strangles outbreak.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Bear Fan, one of the nation's top female sprinters of 2004, has returned to training after failing to get in foal earlier this spring.

A 6-year-old California-bred, Bear Fan worked three furlongs at Santa Anita in 35.20 seconds Thursday. She has been nominated for the $75,000 Valkyr Stakes for statebred fillies and mares over six furlongs at Hollywood Park on July 16. Trainer and co-owner Wesley Ward has mentioned the $150,000 Rancho Bernardo Handicap over 6 1/2 furlongs at Del Mar on Aug. 19 as a goal.