Virginia-bred Quality Road led the list of money-earners in the region with $1.26 million in 2010, and was one of nine stakes winners that year bred by Edward P. “Ned” Evans, who died Dec. 31 at age 68. Evans bred more than 100 stakes winners, including Breeders’ Cup Classic-G1 winner and Horse of the Year Saint Liam (a Kentucky-bred). For four decades top-quality runners were produced at Evans’ Spring Hill Farm in Casanova, Va. He ranked among the top 10 breeders in North America for more than a decade and was the TOBA National Breeder of the Year in 2009.

• Legendary Maryland breeder Robert E. Meyerhoff achieved the rarest of all feats in the Thoroughbred business – breeding and racing a top runner in Broad Brush, and developing him into a leading sire. At age 87, the breeder of 49 stakes winners in his own name and that of Fitzhugh LLC (13.1 percent of his starters) recalled his decades in the business and various aspects of racing. He still owned 50 horses and was the breeder of millionaire Grade 1 winner Richard’s Kid (out of stakes-winning Broad Brush mare Tough Broad), named Maryland-bred Horse of the Year for a second consecutive year in 2010.
  
  
• Larry Johnson’s journey as a breeder began with a $2,400 filly named Ran’s Chick who never got to the races. From there it was only up, as the man who was once denied stalls at Bowie bred mares to the nation’s prized stallions, won Grade 1 races, earned an invitation to Dubai, and routinely sold six-figure yearlings.
  
  Owner of Legacy Farm in Bluemont, Va., Johnson chose to stand his homebred graded stakes winner Street Magician at Northview Stallion Station for his first season in 2011.
  
  A great-grandson of Ran’s Chick, Street Magician is the sire of 2020 Maryland-bred champion 2-year-old filly Street Lute.