BARGAIN BRED RACING SERIES & BREEDING CORNER

Pleasant Tap

This week the Breeding Corner takes a look at Pleasant Tap. Pleasant Tap is a son of Pleasant Colony out of the Stage Door Johnny mare Never Knock. Pleasant Tap has a ton of stamina with a dosage index of 0.90. However Pleasant Tap could sprint with the best of them as well as go long with the best of them. He finished second in the Breeder’s Cup Sprint as a four year old and followed that up a year later with a second place finish in the Breeder’s Cup Classic to A.P. Indy. He won stakes as a two and three year old but did not put it all together until he was five. That year he raced ten times with four wins and five places on his way to being named Champion Older Horse.

Real Life – His best runner to date raced in Japan. Tap Dance City who has earned over six million is out of a Northern Dancer mare. Mr. Prospector mares have produced six winners and two stakes winners. Danzig mares have produced four winners and one stakes winner. He has mixed well with almost every sire line but has been bred quite a bit to Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector line dams. His progeny’s average winning distance is pretty high at 8.43 furlongs. He does not produce a lot of turf horses or two year old winners. His runners tend to take longer to develop.

Sim Life – He has produced two runners that have run 119-speed figures over eight furlongs on dirt. Another three have put up 110+ speed figures in that category. Those horses have used a variety of dam sire combos. Secretariat, Chief’s Crown, Valid Appeal, Raise a Native and Cryptoclearance. He has a couple of runners that have run well on turf, one by Shareef Dancer and one by Septieme Ciel. His fastest runners are mostly four and five years old. A couple have run well at two and three but for the most part his progeny seem not to develop into good runners until they are four. After looking at about half his progeny two things stand out. One a large percentage of his runners are front-runners and because of this some runners have not been tested past a mile. Two Simmers run his progeny on turf quite a bit despite overwhelming evidence his runners run better on dirt.

Breeding Suggestions – Surprisingly the Northern Dancer line has not produced as well as one would think but that line has not been used a whole lot. Secretariat has only been used once and that is one of his best runners and Secretariat is the dam sire of Chief’s Crown who has produced a good runner. The Mr. Prospector and In Reality lines have produced well. The idea I think is to breed Pleasant Tap over some speed but not too much speed. My dream breeding would be Pleasant Tap X Gone West X Northern Dancer. However that would be a hard combo to get so a more reasonable suggestion would be Pleasant Tap X Silver Ghost X Storm Bird.

Bargain Bred – Currently Pleasant Tap is only getting down to about 80 BPs or so during the week. So a bargain bred might not be a very good thing but why not take a shot. Pleasant Tap X Noble Assembly X Oceanic Dancer

What to Expect –Based on real life and sim life results I would expect a late developing runner. Pleasant Tap might be an ideal sire to breed a three-year-old. If I were to breed a two-year-old with him I would race him a couple of times to see what he or she can do. You might get one that runs well at two. If he or she did not do much in a couple of starts I would put him or her on the shelf until the spring of their three-year-old season. If I had had a horse that ran on the lead in sprints I would still stretch him or her out. Pleasant Tap runners are probably good 6f to 12f depending on what dam sires you choose so experiment.  I would also stay on the dirt. I would try the turf but Pleasant Tap produces more dirt runners.