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.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Smarty Jones's owners are committed to racing him at 4 and making him available for his fans to see after he retires to stud in Kentucky.

Those are two important stipulations Roy and Pat Chapman are making as they consider offers for the Triple Crown hopeful's breeding rights, according to George Isaacs, who is handling negotiations for the Chapmans. Isaacs said the couple plans to retain 50 percent of their Elusive Quality colt, and the contenders for the rest include "a who's who of Kentucky farms," as Isaacs put it.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Only two Kentucky Derby winners have been bred in Pennsylvania, and horseman Brent Fernung bought the dams of both those Derby winners before their classic successes. In addition to his pastime of buying the dams of Derby winners, Fernung is general manager of Cloverleaf Farm in Florida for John and Susan Sykes.

Fernung bought the dam of Smarty Jones, the Smile mare I'll Get Along, for Cloverleaf and had purchased the dam of Lil E. Tee privately for himself in the spring of 1992, the year Lil E. Tee won the Derby.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The day after Smarty Jones won the Kentucky Derby, trainer John Servis and his wife, Sherry, gathered up the family to escape the post-race hubbub in Louisville. They drove east on I-64 for about an hour, until they reached the edge of Versailles in Woodford County. They were making a sentimental pilgrimage to the place where the Smarty Jones story began - Gainsborough Farm.

LAS VEGAS - In addition to the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, Belmont Park will run 10 other stakes this week, including the meet's first two 2-year-old stakes of the year, the Fashion for fillies and the Flash for colts.

The Fashion Stakes has been among the first stops for precocious 2-year-old fillies who were ready to win a stakes in late May or early June. Champions who won the Fashion include Affectionately (1962), Queen Empress (1964), Numbered Account (1971), Ruffian (1974), Dearly Precious (1975), and Before Dawn (1981).

LEXINGTON, Ky. - A severe thunderstorm that spawned a tornado Thursday night in northern Fayette County, Ky., appeared Friday to have left major breeding farms relatively unscathed.

The tornado, which injured five people, caused extensive damage to homes in Lexington's Masterson Station and Russell Cave Road areas, and the storm knocked out power to at least 15,500 people in Fayette County.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The purchase of Avenue of Flags, a solid stallion by Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, was surely one of the best stallion buys of the year. The sire of a half-dozen graded stakes winners, including Grade 1 winners Notable Career and Joey Franco, Avenue of Flags has nearly two dozen stakes winners overall and total progeny earnings approaching $12 million.

Furthermore, Avenue of Flags had been standing for an advertised fee of $15,000 at the Mabee family's Golden Eagle Farm near Ramona, Calif.

Racing lore is full of tales about broodmares, foals, and yearlings who, their breeders would later lament, were sold too soon. W. Ed Waltrip the Osprey, Fla., doctor who decided to divest his Thoroughbred holdings in the fall of 2002, is no doubt one of those who has a tinge of regret.

A former Kentucky resident and modest commercial breeder, Waltrip hired Francis and Barbara Vanlangendonck's Summerfield Sales to sell him out at the 2002 Keeneland November sales.

Gail Casselman has bred only two racehorses in her 17 years in the horse business, and she may never breed another one.

But one of them, the long-backed and high-striding gelding Copper Trail, could put Casselman in the headlines come Queen's Plate Day, June 27.

A Woodbine-based trainer, Casselman no longer owns Copper Trail - he is owned by Stolar Stables and trained by Jim Day - but she's almost as happy simply collecting the breeders' awards that have stuffed her mailbox since last fall, when Copper Trail won the first of his two stakes races.