LEXINGTON, Ky. - If recent yearling sales are any indicator, Kentucky's November auction season may well produce some fireworks.

LEXINGTON, KY. - One of the consistently handsome and athletic types that made his sire, End Sweep, an immediate success at stud, Precise End proved a high-quality racehorse, winning stakes at 2 and 3, and is showing considerable promise with his first crop of racers this year.

Birdstone, the Belmont Stakes winner who ended Smarty Jones's bid for the 2004 Triple Crown, will enter stud in 2005 at Gainesway in Lexington, Ky.

A 3-year-old Grindstone colt, Birdstone will stand for $10,000, according to John Hendrickson, the husband of Birdstone's owner and breeder, Marylou Whitney. Birdstone was foaled at Gainesway.

Birdstone was retired last week after X-rays showed he had a bone chip in his left front ankle. Birdstone finished seventh in his last start, the Breeders' Cup Classic at Lone Star Park, on Oct. 30.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Moscow Burning, who finished fourth in the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Lone Star on Oct. 30, is being considered for the $3.9 million Japan Cup against males at Tokyo Racecourse on Nov. 28.

Trainer Jim Cassidy said a decision on whether to try for the international race will be made in coming days. Moscow Burning is scheduled to resume training at Santa Anita on Sunday.

Cassidy said that if Moscow Burning does not start in the Japan Cup, she is likely to be given a three-week break to prepare for a 2005 campaign.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Ashford Stud, the North American division of Coolmore Stud's global operation, has raised the fees for freshman sires Fusaichi Pegasus and Giant's Causeway.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Awesome Again, winner of the Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs in 1998 over Silver Charm, Swain, Victory Gallop, Coronado's Quest, and Skip Away, became the first Breeders' Cup Classic victor to sire a winner of the same race with Ghostzapper's success on Oct. 30 at Lone Star.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - A major component of New York's breeding program, the stallions standing in the Empire State, will be front and center at Aqueduct on Sunday.

That's when the initial races in a three-part series for foals born in 2002 and sired by New York stallions will be run. The stakes for these 2-year-olds are the $125,000 Great White Way for colts and geldings and the $125,000 Fifth Avenue for fillies.

Anyone interested in Maryland history - both human and equine, and specifically for southern Maryland - can find a wellspring in the form of Hal C.B. Clagett. An esteemed member of Maryland's breeding community since the early 1950's and a horseman his entire life, Clagett, who will turn 88 on Nov. 22, lives full-speed ahead, but always finds the time to recall a lifetime of memories.

Despite the surname, Bill and Annabel Murphy did not come to America from Dublin, Ireland. Their roots, instead, are in Durham, South Africa.

"Don't get me wrong," said Bill Murphy, "I still have a connection to the auld sod a couple of generations back."

These days, the husband and wife team reside in Ocala, Fla., where they operate a bloodstock agency and breed for both the market and the racetrack. They named their enterprise Elangeni Farm.

"Elangeni is Zulu language for 'place in the sun,' " explained Murphy. "It absolutely fits Ocala, don't you think?"

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Halfbridled, the champion 2-year-old filly of 2003, has been retired and sent to Kentucky, where she will be bred next year, trainer Richard Mandella said.

The decision was made earlier this week after Halfbridled was found to have a cannon bone injury, Mandella said. He described the injury as an enlargement that formed at the back of one of Halfbridled's cannon bones, between the cannon bone and the splint bone.

"We had to call it off," Mandella said of Halfbridled's career.