The Florida yearling market opens on Monday, Aug. 23, for the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's selected session, with 242 cataloged. The open sessions, August 24-26, have 972 cataloged. There's an 11 a.m. starting time for all four days of sales.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Bertram Linder, 88, can almost always be found in an aisle seat near the back of Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga sale pavilion, to the right of the auctioneer as he looks out from his stand. And there is good reason to find Linder, whose five decades at the Saratoga auction have given him a deep stock of stories to tell about horses and horse people. The 2004 sale marked Linder's 50th year, and he has seen plenty of changes in the yearling market since he first arrived and showed a horse to trainer Max Hirsch.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - When Roses in May won the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga, he became the first Grade 1 winner for his sire, Devil His Due. Before this weekend, the reflected glory of Grade 1 success had eluded Devil His Due since his retirement. A winner of 11 races and more than $3.9 million, Devil His Due was a Grade 1 specialist as a racer, winning five and running in the money in 11 other Grade 1 stakes.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga selected yearling sale ended on an upbeat note Thursday night with three horses reaching or breaking the $1 million mark. But the three-day auction market was surprisingly conservative overall, and the sale closed with decreases across the board.

The men of the night were Roger King of King World Productions and his trainer Wesley Ward, who walked out with the session's most expensive lot, a $1.4 million Storm Cat filly out of champion Jewel Princess.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Wednesday night found Roger King in a familiar position: standing in the doorway to Fasig-Tipton's bidding ring, cigarette in his mouth, trying to decide whether to bid again.

A Fasig-Tipton attendant was holding the door open for King, and so was auctioneer Walt Robertson. The price board showed $1.85 million, and inside the pavilion, the man who had made that last $50,000 bid sat bolt upright, hoping, frankly, that King would call it a night and head for the bar, or anywhere except back in the bidding ring.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - A $1.85 million colt by young sire Giant's Causeway provided a dramatic climax for day two of Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga yearling sale Wednesday night in Saratoga Springs.

Team Valor's Barry Irwin outdueled Sunland Park owner Stan Fulton and Roger King, the flamboyant owner of King World Productions, for the colt, who is a three-quarters brother to Grade 2 winner Keats and a half-brother to Grade 3-placed Grand Score.

Medaglia d'Oro will have a $35,000 fee when he stands his first season in 2005 at Hill 'n' Dale Farm in Lexington, Ky.

A 5-year-old son of El Prado, Medaglia d'Oro retired earlier this year with three Grade 1 victories to his credit, in the 2002 Travers, 2003 Whitney, and 2004 Donn. He also finished second in five other Grade 1 events, most notably the 2002 Belmont and the 2002 and 2003 Breeders' Cup Classics. He retired with a lifetime record of 17-8-7-0 and $4,554,720 in winnings.

Calumet Farm, now operated by the heirs of late owner Henryk deKwiatkowski, announced Wednesday that the farm has hired Bill Witman as farm manager.

Witman most recently oversaw the development of E.K. Gaylord II's Gaillardia Farm in Versailles, Ky. Before moving to Kentucky for that work, Witman was co-manager of Gaylord's Oklahoma farm, Lazy E Ranch, the Southwest's largest Thoroughbred breeding operation.

LAS VEGAS - Grass racing is more popular in this country than ever before, but there is still a paucity of turf races for juveniles. It is refreshing to see that tracks like Belmont, Saratoga, Del Mar, and Ellis Park are carding more turf races for 2-year-olds than ever before, but opportunities for young runners who are better bred for grass are still sporadic. With few options, many of these juveniles wind up racing on dirt, where they are rarely as effective.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Derry Meeting Farm in Pennsylvania is a familiar name to yearling buyers at Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga yearling sale. It is a Tiffany's-style consignment, small but select, that operates with style but not flash. Its owner, Bettina Jenney, is not one of the slick corporate agents striving to gain an edge in the highly competitive business of selling horses.