Of first-crop stallion’s Volatile’s six winners from 20 starts, two have come at Saratoga Race Course—a small sample size to be sure but also encouraging for Three Chimneys, where the son of Violence stands for $15,000.

“It’s really exciting for a horse that was super fast but not particularly precocious,” said Three Chimneys’ COO Chris Baker. “His 2-year-olds are doing it at the right venues in advance of the sales.” 

Three Chimneys’ homebred Reliable Source, out of the unraced Broken Vow mare Repeta , is Volatile’s latest winner, taking a July 28 maiden special weight at Saratoga Race Course by 2 1/2 lengths. Bred by Three Chimneys and now trained by Steve Asmussen, Reliable Source was a $250,000 RNA at last year’s Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

“We liked her well enough that if someone wanted to buy her from us, they needed to value her well above what we valued her at,” explained Baker. “When that didn’t occur in September, we were happy to put her in training. She’s athletic, and she’s from our first-crop stallion that we believe in. She’s out of a mare that’s proven to be a great producer of runners by a variety of sires, so it was a pretty easy choice. I think the market liked her, but maybe not as much as we did. For a $17,500 stud fee, $250,000 is a lot of money. A price greater than ten times the stud fee would have a lot of people saying, ‘Yeah, I’m out.'”