Quest, a Grade 2 winner, has retired to Arthur Hancock III's Stone Farm in Paris, Ky., and will stand at stud beginning in 2006.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Even in his wildest expectations, Pablo Suarez could not have envisioned the way Atticus has been received in his debut at stud in California this year.

Because of the success of his son High Fly, a Kentucky Derby hopeful who won the Grade 1 Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park on April 2, Atticus has been booked to 85 mares at Magali Farms in Santa Ynez, Calif. The book size is likely to increase to 100 before the breeding season ends.

Jim Crupi is an ebullient man whose face seldom wears a frown. He is also a consummate pinhooker. You won't find a broodmare or a stallion at Crupi's New Castle Farm, the 138-acre facility in Ocala, Fla., that he owns with his son Robert.

"We're not in the breeding game - let someone else do that," Jim Crupi said.

What Crupi does is buy young potential racehorses and sell them, mostly at the sales. For a select clientele, he breaks and trains yearlings as they become 2-year-olds.

New York stallions have been making noise in the auction ring and on the track in recent weeks.

At major sales in Florida, 2-year-olds in training by New York sires Freud and Phone Trick brought high prices. A colt by Phone Trick at the Ocala Breeders' Sales February sale sold for $550,000, which was the second-highest price at the auction. Freud, whose first runners will hit the track this year, was represented by a juvenile at $220,000 at OBS February and one at $300,000 at the Fasig-Tipton sale on March 1

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The recent outbreak of the upper respiratory disease strangles in Louisville and Florida has spawned tighter requirements on horses shipping between racetracks. But it is not expected to have any negative effect on Keeneland's April 19 2-year-old sale in Lexington.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Victory in the April 2 Florida Derby was the linchpin in making High Fly the morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby in the third round of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager. Depending on what happens in the Blue Grass and Santa Anita Derby, the chestnut colt might start as the race favorite at Churchill Downs.

If so, he would be the first Kentucky Derby favorite owned by Charlotte Weber's Live Oak Stud, which bred and races High Fly, a son of Atticus and the Slewpy mare Verbasle.

Sam Huff, Hall of Fame football player and founder of the West Virginia Breeders Classics, has always played to win.

"If I lose, I want to know why," said Huff, 70, the middle linebacker who helped the New York Giants win six division titles between 1956 and 1963, and a world championship in 1956.

So Huff initially resisted the idea of rushing his homebred 3-year-old filly Jet Set Citi into stakes company, three weeks after she won her maiden debut.

LAS VEGAS - Now it gets serious for those 3-year-olds aiming for the Kentucky Derby. The big four prep races at nine furlongs for the Kentucky Derby - the Wood Memorial, Santa Anita Derby, Arkansas Derby, and Blue Grass Stakes - will be contested over the next two weekends and hopefully will clarify what is now viewed as a wide-open Derby.

A $110,000 daughter of Texas sire Valid Expectations led gains in average and median prices at Fasig-Tipton's Texas 2-year-old sale Tuesday at Lone Star Park.

The sale-topping filly is out of It Fits, by Dunham's Gift, and is a half-sister to stakes-placed Hellohellohello. Lane's End Texas, which stands Valid Expectations, purchased the filly from Leprechaun Racing, agent.

The filly last went through the auction ring at Fasig-Tipton's 2004 Texas August yearling sale, where K & B Ventures paid $35,000 for her.

Vinery Australia set a new broodmare auction price record of Aus$2.05 million Sunday at its dispersal through the Inglis auction house in Sydney.

Three Vinery mares - Mannington, Snowdrift, and In the Past - sold for Aus$1 million or more to break the previous Inglis broodmare record of Aus$900,000 set by Burst in 1996.

Mannington, a daughter of Danehill and former champion juvenile filly Bint Marscay, was the dispersal's top seller at Aus$2.05 million, or about $1.57 million U.S. Darley Australia bought the 8-year-old mare, who sold in foal to Red Ransom.