Fiber Sonde

What do you get when you breed a mare who is by a sire who never raced because he crashed through a fence to a stallion who also never made it to the races because he, too, tried to run headlong through a fence? If you're Cyndy McKee and her late husband, John McKee, of West Virginia's Beau Ridge Farm, the answer is the 3-year-old filly Direct the Cat, who on July 4 won a seven-furlong, second-level open allowance at Charles Town by 15 1/4 lengths as the 1-to-10 favorite....

After completing our marathon tour of covering options in the Bluegrass, today we take a tour of the main regional hubs. Clearly, it would be impractical to go into anything like the same depth and, besides, local breeders know their own markets best. But while we will only visit some of the principal centers, and pick out only one or two names in each, bloodstock investors anywhere can acknowledge the professionalism that unites horsemen, coast to coast, and think about the possibilities of diversification or experiment--above all in those programs...