Horse Sense For the budding racing enthusiast, a stable of websites can provide an introduction to the sport

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
Backstretch 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."

--John O'Keefe

COLOR PHOTO: BILL FRAKES