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.

Miswaki, sire of the 1991 Horse of the Year, Black Tie Affair, and 95 other stakes winners, has been retired from stud duty at age 26 because of declining fertility, Walmac International announced Tuesday.

A son of Mr. Prospector, Miswaki will remain at the Lexington, Ky., farm as a pensioner. He stood there for 22 years and was one of the foundation stallions for the operation, owned by John T.L. Jones Jr.

The stallion fee for Gone West will rise by $25,000 for the 2005 breeding season to $150,000 live foal, the first fee increase for the popular stallion in six years.

Gone West, a 20-year-old son of Mr. Prospector, has progeny who include the current leading sire, Elusive Quality, and the top third-crop sire, Grand Slam, as well as 143 stakes performers. Gone West is syndicated and stands at Alice Chandler's Mill Ridge Farm in Lexington, Ky.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Fasig-Tipton auction house hopes history will repeat itself at its Saratoga selected yearling sale, which runs Tuesday through Thursday.

Certainly recent history bodes well for the auction. Fasig-Tipton's July yearling sale produced sharp double-digit gains across the board. More significantly, prices were pumped up by new buyers at the middle and top of the market. That ingredient alone could add plenty of spice to the Saratoga sale, which features Fasig-Tipton's best yearling catalog of the season.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Smarty Jones's racing career is now closed, and so, apparently, is the sale of shares in the 3-year-old stallion prospect. Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky., offered 20 shares for $650,000 each, and, according to Dan Rosenberg, president of Three Chimneys, the demand easily outstripped availability.

"They sold out in a matter of several days," Rosenberg said Friday. "Our problem in selling the shares was saying no to people we didn't want to say no to."

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Choctaw Nation won Sunday's San Diego Handicap at Del Mar over Pleasantly Perfect and is a contender for the upcoming Pacific Classic. A bay 4-year-old, Choctaw Nation is one of a handful of horses annually bred by Dr. Gordon Layton, who owns Loch Lea Farm outside Paris, Ky.

"We get anywhere from seven to 10 foals a year," Layton said. "But we run along fairly well. I can't complain. And we've had the opportunity to raise a lot of stakes winners for our boarders."

Afleet Alex, the unbeaten 2-year-old who won Saratoga's Grade 2 Sanford Stakes, is still another chapter in the story of the horse who got away.

John Silvertand is the owner of a design/decorator business in Boca Raton. Business dropped off after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Silvertand made some business adjustments. One of these was to foal-share with his mares. Maggy Hawk, dam of Afleet Alex, was one of these mares.

Much like jockey Todd Kabel's domination of the riding ranks at Woodbine, champion Sky Classic's offspring rule the Toronto track's E.P. Taylor turf course.

Indeed, the 114th Breeders' Stakes, the third jewel of Canada's Triple Crown and the only leg of the series on turf, features seven entrants in the 11-horse field related to Sky Classic, a 17-year-old stallion.

"It shouldn't be a surprise," said Jim Day, who trained Sky Classic and has a son of the sire, His Smoothness, in the Breeders'. "He's been a pretty successful sire, and generally they prefer the turf."

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Catienus, who stood in New York for the first time this year, will be back for a second year at Highcliff Farm in Delanson, Ken Ramsey said.

Catienus covered more than 80 mares in his first season in the Empire State, according to Ramsey, who owns 42 of those mares. The mares Ramsey bred to Catienus dropped the foals they were carrying at Highcliff, qualifying the babies to become registered New York-breds.

Ramsey moved Catienus, who stood for $3,500 this year, from his farm in Nicholasville, Ky., where he had stood for two years.