Pleasant Tap, champion of 1992, euthanized

Pleasant Tap, the champion older male of 1992 and the sire of a champion, was euthanized on Friday at Lane’s End Farm near Versailles, Ky., after contracting laminitis, the farm said on Monday. He was 23.

By Pleasant Colony out of the Stage Door Johnny mare Never Knock – making him a half brother to 1994 Kentucky Derby winner Go for Gin – Pleasant Tap sired 53 stakes winners, including David Junior, the champion 3-year-old in England in 2005; Premium Tap, the winner of the 2006 Woodward Stakes; and Tiago, the winner of the 2007 Santa Anita Derby. His sire won the 1981 Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Retired after his championship season, in which he won the Jockey Club Gold Cup and Suburban Handicap and was second in both the Breeders’ Cup Classic and two other Grade 1 races, Pleasant Tap had career earnings of $2.72 million. He was owned and bred in Virginia by Thomas Mellon Evans, the owner of Buckland Farm, and trained by Christopher Speckert.

Pleasant Tap initially stood at Evans’s Buckland Farm in Virginia, alongside his sire. He was moved to Lane’s End in 1997. This year, he stood for a $10,000 fee.