Volatile

5th-Monmouth, $51,675, Msw, 6-16, 2yo, f, 5f, :58.82, ft, 4 1/2 lengths. AGUAS DE CRISTAL (f, 2, Volatile--Cedar Hall {MSP}, by Bayern) broke her maiden at first asking which handed her freshman sire (by Violence) his first winner out of 124 foals of racing age. As a 7-2 shot here, the filly pursued favorite Me Governor (The Factor) up the backstretch. As the pair separated themselves from the rest of the field, they began to trade blows into the lane. With a sixteenth left, it was clear Aguas de Cristal...

TIMONIUM, MD - Randy Hartley and Dean DeRenzo sent out two horses to work during the first under-tack show session for the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale Tuesday and came away with the bullet workers at a furlong and a quarter-mile, with a colt by Authentic (hip 59) covering his quarter-mile in :21 1/5 and a filly by Volatile (hip 12) going a furlong in :10 flat. The first of three sessions of the Midlantic May under-tack show began at 8 a.m. Tuesday under cloudy skies and with...

The whole point of the breeze-ups is that the functionality of a pedigree is on display. Nowadays, in fact, breeze times are treated as though rendering more or less redundant all the painstaking surmise of the yearling sales. Pinhookers, having seen so many offbeat sires achieve knockout sales, can prioritize "run"—knowing that lot of prospectors won't even bother looking at the catalogue until the lots have shown their wares. But it's for precisely that reason that European breeze-up consignors have increasingly been able to repair a dismal separation between the...

It's that time again. The first major 2-year-old sale, the March OBS sale, is in the books and the buyers, sellers and bloodstock agents have had their chance to evaluate this year's freshman sires. So who do they like? We asked the experts listed below to give us their pick for leading freshman sire and an under-the-radar stallion they expect will have a big 2024. Liz Crow: "I really liked the Improbables (WinStar) at the OBS March breeze show. It's very sad that he passed away. I thought he had,...

The year 2024 could be a defining season for Hill 'n' Dale at Xalapa stallion Violence. Not only must he continue to make his mark as a sire with a limited book of 125 mares, but the son of Medaglia d'Oro will now take the first steps towards becoming a sire of sires. He got off to a fast start doing just that last year as his young son Volatile made headlines with his first crop of yearlings. From just a $17,500 initial stud fee, the Grade I-winning Three Chimneys...

Today we'll consider some of the sires standing between $10,001 and $19,999. For a long time, I called this the Lookin At Lucky zone. But don't worry, we won't be deploring his neglect yet again: he's staying in Chile, where they evidently appreciate him rather more. Plenty of horses in this bracket have recently relinquished their brief window of commercial opportunity, and are now hanging around to discover whether they might join the very small group whose first runners generate a fresh vogue. Even with the newcomers out of the...

Dr. Schivel (Violence-Lil Nugget, by Mining for Money), a Grade I winner at both two and three, will retire after making his final start in this weekend's GI Breeders' Cup Sprint and take up stud duty at Taylor Made Stallions in 2024, the farm confirmed Tuesday. A fee will be announced at a later date. First or second in nine of 14 lifetime starts, the earner of $1,327,100 was campaigned by Red Baron's Barn, Rancho Temescal, Reeves Thoroughbred Racing, and William A. Branch, and trained by Mark Glatt. "We are...

Gun Runner has joined Into Mischief and Curlin on top of the roster of 2024 stallions with a $250,000 fee, Three Chimneys announced Friday morning. He is the first sire in history to have sired nine individual millionaires with just two full crops. He currently ranks second on the TDN's General Sire list, behind only Into Mischief, with over $14 million in progeny earnings. Counted among his 13 stakes winners and 31 stakes performers in 2023 are Grade I winners Gunite and 'TDN Rising Stars' Echo Zulu and Locked, the...

by Jessica Martini & Christina Bossinakis LEXINGTON, KY - With the very first horse through the ring bringing $1.3 million, the second session of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale was off to the races Tuesday and the action didn't slow down throughout the day as the second-to-last offering brought $1.25 million. In between, 13 other yearlings sold for seven figures, including a colt by Into Mischief who brought top price of $3 million from the partnership of Chuck Sonson, West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford. With eight million-dollar yearlings Monday, the...

First-crop yearling sire Volatile got his first seven-figure sales yearling early on the second day of the Keeneland September sale with Hip 215, a filly out of MGISW Love and Pride (A.P. Indy), who sold for $1.15 million. Three Chimneys Farm, LLC bred the Apr. 25 filly, whose dam has already produced two stakes winners and is a granddaughter of GISW Cara Rafaela (Quiet American), the dam of late champion and sire Bernardini. Volatile stands at Three Chimneys. Mike Rutherford was the purchaser of the Taylor Made Sales-consigned filly.  ...

LEXINGTON, KY - The Fasig-Tipton July Sale of Selected Yearlings failed to live up to its lofty 2022 levels, but concluded Tuesday evening with solid numbers and a filly from the first crop of GI Kentucky Derby winner Authentic leading the way when selling for $475,000 to Alex and Jo Ann Lieblong. "We had a very solid start to the 2023 yearling sales marketplace," said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning. "I think we all recognized that we were coming off a euphoric 2022 yearling marketplace that saw pretty significant increases across...

by Jessica Martini & Christie DeBernardis LEXINGTON, KY - The Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale moved into the first of two Book 3 sesssions Thursday with continued competitive bidding and figures through four days of the auction still tracking ahead of 2021 statistics. For the session, 248 head grossed $20,988,500. The average of $84,631 was up 6.7% from the opening session of the 2021 Book 3 section, while the median remained constant at $65,000. The session's buy-back rate was 26.63%. It was 23.64% a year ago. Jody Huckabay, bidding on...