INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The Del Mar yearling sale on Aug. 16 has a catalog of only 122 horses, a drop from the 159 in the 2003 sale.

But with a move to a one-day sale this year from a two-day sale last year, and a switch in venue from the Del Mar Horsepark to the paddock at Del Mar racetrack, sale organizers expect a higher average sale price, according to Doug Burge, the general manager of the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association, which conducts the sale.

Four of Canada's all-time leading breeders are represented in Sunday's $500,000 Labatt Woodbine Oaks, the nine-furlong classic race for Canadian-bred 3-year-old fillies.

The smallest field in 11 years will start, but what the race lacks in quantity, it makes up in pedigree power.

Elizabeth Samuel's Sam-Son Farms, which owns six Oaks trophies and has started fillies in 26 editions of the race, sends out the undefeated Smart Strike filly Eye of the Sphynx, the ninth foal of stakes winner Queen of Egypt, who finished seventh in the 1995 Oaks.

LAS VEGAS - The best 3-year-old in the world may not be in the United States.

Although Smarty Jones remains the best 3-year-old in this country despite his gallant loss in the Belmont Stakes, there is still an exciting and undefeated 3-year-old in France.

The Prix du Jockey-Club (French Derby) was the marquee race of Chantilly's most important day of racing on Sunday, which included the Grade 1 Prix Jean Prat, Group 2 Prix de Sandringham, and Group 2 Prix du Gros-Chene. But all the talk was about Bago, who toyed with his opponents in the Prix Jean Prat.

Clever Trick, sire of millionaire Anet and 16 other graded stakes winners, was euthanized on June 5 after a Glencrest Farm veterinarian determined that the stallion had had massive kidney failure. Clever Trick was 28 and stood at Glencrest for his entire stud career.

According to a release issued by David Greathouse, co-owner of Glencrest, farm officials found Clever Trick on the ground in his paddock on Saturday.

When Brazilian expatriate Pico Central won the Met Mile on May 31, no one was cheering louder than Florida-based bloodstock agent John Fulton. The morning of the race, Fulton had completed a deal to purchase privately a half-interest in Pico Central's dam, Sheila Purple, and half-sister Central do Brasil.

Fulton declined to disclose the price he paid to Brazilian breeder Alessandro Arcangeli, but said, "He let me in at a price that was pre-Met Mile."

Two New York-breds sired by European champion Stravinsky and bred by Doug Koch and Tom Tatham are making a splash across the Atlantic.

Symphony of Psalms, a half-sister to New York-bred champions Private Emblem and Rhum, won the Prix de Choisy au Bac at Compeigne against males by two lengths in her second career start on May 25.

The 3-year-old Symphony of Psalms is trained by John E. Hammond. Hammond acted as agent on the purchase of Symphony of Psalms at Keeneland's 2002 September yearling sale, where Tatham bought out Koch's interest in the filly for $120,000.

Entrepreneur Jim Hindman has had many successes over his lifetime, perhaps none more notable than creating Jiffy Lube International, the auto service company whose motto is to "get you out in a jiffy." So it seems a bit contradictory that the finest Thoroughbred runner Hindman has bred would take his time, getting his first stakes victory at age 7.

The fifth and final Florida sale of 2-year-olds in training takes place in Ocala, Fla., on June 16 and 17 with 499 cataloged. Tacked onto the end of the two days of selling are 34 older horses, also in training.

For sales agent Niall Brennan, it's the end of a long, long season.

"Usually, we sell somewhere between 70 and 80 a year," said Brennan. "Most of them are pin-hooks."

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Moscow Burning, the California-bred filly who scored a front-running win in the Grade 2 Sheepshead Bay Handicap at Belmont Park on May 29, is a former mid-level claimer from northern California whose owners nearly passed on buying her last summer.

Don Van Kempen, who owns Moscow Burning with Jeffrey Mariani and Michael Nentwig, remembers vividly how Moscow Burning won a $12,500 claiming race despite a rough trip at the Solano County Fair in Vallejo last July.

"We saw her leading by two, bump the rail, and win by five," Van Kempen said.

Larry McKibben recalls watching while a farrier tapped in the last nail on the chestnut colt's hoof. It was July 2003, and the colt was getting a final set of racing shoes at Bridlewood Farm in Ocala, Fla., before heading north to launch his career as a racehorse.

The colt was one of 60 juveniles last summer at Bridlewood, where people such as McKibben, the farm's assistant trainer, teach young horses to carry a saddle, then a rider, and finally to break from a gate.