Horse Sense

Fusaichi Pegasus's first attempt at stud may have been with the Irish mare Name of Love on Valentine's Day, but to the breeders at Kentucky's Ashford Farm, love had nothing to do with it. Why? Last June, Ashford paid a record $60 million for Fusaichi Pegasus (below), the 2000 Kentucky Derby winner, and has millions in potential profits riding on his ability to produce champions. In racing, it's usually about bloodlines. So if this year's Triple Crown has stimulated you to follow the sport online, a couple of breeding sites are appropriate places to start. Bloodhorse.com has links to the top farms around the country, a Horse Health section and an earnings list (updated daily) for the progeny of the leading sires of 2001. For pedigrees of the winners of every Triple Crown race since 1940 and every Breeders' Cup Classic, log onto chef-de-race.com, a site run by Steven A. Roman, a Ph.D in, of all things, chemistry.

If you're more interested in current runners, equibase.com's Back-stretch Buzz link provides daily news and notes from every major track in North America. You can also see charts from every race posted as quickly as 20 minutes after the finish, along with concise postrace comments. The recently redesigned drf.com (the official site of the Daily Racing Form) has a nifty past performance tutorial that enables you to decipher all those confusing numbers in a racing program. (To use the tutorial, you need a flash plug-in.)

By the way, Fusaichi Pegasus, whose stud fee is $150,000, has 13 mares in foal. But future bettor beware. "There are no guarantees," says Ron Mitchell, editor of bloodhorse.com. "All elements of this industry are at the mercy of the forces of nature."