HORSE RACING / BREEDERS’ CUP : Late-Blooming Pleasant Tap Might Be Flower of the Classic

When Pleasant Tap first arrived at Chris Speckert’s barn at Santa Anita, it was by accident. This year, everything has gone according to plan.

And if that plan continues to work, Pleasant Tap will win Saturday’s $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park and clinch horse-of-the-year honors.

Pleasant Tap didn’t become a contender for the championship until he left California early this year. Since April, the 5-year-old son of Pleasant Colony, the winner of the 1981 Kentucky Derby and Preakness, has been the most consistent older horse in the country. While never winning more than two consecutive races, Pleasant Tap has been either first or second in his last eight starts--all since he quit racing with blinkers. He has won the Jockey Club Gold Cup and the Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park, the Churchill Downs Handicap and the Commonwealth Breeders’ Cup Stakes at Keeneland.

Winning at distances between seven furlongs and 1 1/4 miles, Pleasant Tap has earned $1.3 million, sending his total over the $2.1-million mark. On Saturday here, even if he loses, Pleasant Tap will turn into a Breeders’ Cup curiosity, becoming the first horse in the nine-year-old series to run in four different races. Two horses--Precisionist and El Senor--ran in four Breeders’ Cups, but neither of them competed in a different race each time.

“If he’s back next year as a 6-year-old--and I sure hope he is--maybe we’ll run him in the (Breeders’ Cup) Steeplechase,” Speckert quipped.

Of the more than six dozen horses who will run for $10 million in purses in seven races Saturday, Pleasant Tap is the only holdover from 1989, when Gulfstream Park played host to the Breeders’ Cup for the first time.

In 1989, Pleasant Tap was an 11-1 shot in the Juvenile, running only his fourth race. He had scored his first victory in the Sunny Slope Stakes at Santa Anita a month before the Breeders’ Cup.

Showing Speckert and jockey Eddie Delahoussaye the nonchalant running style that has characterized his career, Pleasant Tap broke last in a 12-horse field and trailed by 10 lengths after a half-mile. A mild rally resulted in a sixth-place finish in the 1 1/16-mile race.

The next year, trying to copy his sire and win the Derby, Pleasant Tap was 40-1 at Churchill Downs and in 11th place early, 13 lengths behind. Under Kent Desormeaux, he made up some ground, but Unbridled and Summer Squall were the class of that race, finishing 1-2. Pleasant Tap was third, beaten by 9 1/2 lengths.

Three days before the Preakness, Pleasant Tap suffered a strained tendon and was scratched from the race. Back in action that fall, the horse was sent to Ross Pearce, who was training Eastern horses for Thomas Mellon Evans, the owner and breeder. With one victory in two starts for Pearce, Pleasant Tap was entered on grass for only the second time, in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Belmont Park. At 10-1, he lagged far behind with Jerry Bailey riding and finished eighth.

During the winter of 1990-91, Pleasant Tap was back in California with Speckert. He came from last place to win the seven-furlong Malibu, but the rest of his races at Santa Anita that season recalled the old pattern: Unenthusiastic beginnings, late runs and little purse money. What was worse, he developed chips in both knees and was out of action for five months after arthroscopic surgery.

The Breeders’ Cup last year was at Churchill Downs, and Speckert decided to run Pleasant Tap in the six-furlong Sprint. He hadn’t run that distance since his first two starts, at Del Mar during the summer of 1989.

Pleasant Tap was also pre-entered for the Mile, but the field was oversubscribed and there was some doubt that he would have the credentials to get in. Speckert was confident Pleasant Tap would at least earn a check in the Sprint. As it turned out, he was the best American horse in the race, but Sheikh Albadou, a 26-1 shot from England who was running on dirt for the first time, was a three-length winner. Pleasant Tap, with Delahoussaye riding, earned $200,000 for running second.

This year, there was the American Championship Racing Series and its $750,000 first-place bonus, but Speckert made other plans. Pleasant Tap raced in two of the nine series races, finishing second both times, but these appearances were coincidental.

“Everything was predicated on getting him ready for the Classic, having him just right for Gulfstream,” Speckert said. “I don’t want to sound like a snob, but the bonus was really a pittance, compared to what horses can earn these days. In just one of the races we ran in, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, the purse was $850,000. By trying to keep up with that series and chase the bonus, a lot of horses have been buried. Best Pal was one horse who paid the price, didn’t he?”

Speckert first saw Pleasant Tap during the spring of 1989. Evans’ Buckland Farm told the trainer that six horses would be sent to him.

“One of them, I believe he was a Sovereign Dancer (offspring), came up with sore shins,” Speckert said. “Turned out he was a horse who never ran in a race. To take his place, they threw Pleasant Tap on the plane.”

Evans breeds dozens of mares to Pleasant Colony every spring. One of the foals, a filly named Pleasant Stage, won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies for Speckert last year. Pleasant Stage, two days away from running in the Del Mar Oaks in August, had a fatal reaction to a vitamin shot. She was dead in minutes.

“It’s difficult looking at young Pleasant Colonys and telling which ones will be good,” Speckert said. “It’s like sticking a pin in the names. Most of his horses are late developing. They’re big and gangly and awkward. When I first had Pleasant Tap, he could hardly gallop. He didn’t know how to get out of his own way.”

Pleasant Tap’s last victory, in the Jockey Club Gold Cup on Oct. 10, came with a different jockey, the veteran Gary Stevens. Delahoussaye, who rode Pleasant Tap to his first victory and was aboard for four others, chose to ride A.P. Indy that day, and a horrible start contributed to a third-place finish, almost seven lengths behind the winner.

“I think Delahoussaye got off my horse more out of loyalty to Neil (Drysdale, A.P. Indy’s trainer) than loyalty to the horse,” Speckert said.

Stevens had never ridden Pleasant Tap. “I knew he was good, but I didn’t think he was that good,” Stevens said the day after the Belmont race.

Stevens has won several major races, including the Kentucky Derby with Winning Colors in 1988, and his Breeders’ Cup mounts have earned more than $3 million. But the Breeders’ Cup winner’s circle has been elusive. Before he won the 1990 Turf with In the Wings, Stevens had been blanked 22 times. His Breeders’ Cup record going into Saturday is one for 28.

“Pleasant Tap needs an aggressive rider like Stevens,” Speckert said. “They were up closer in that last race. Gary won’t let the horse muck around back there. He’ll get on him even before he thinks about loafing. He won’t let it happen.”

Horse Racing Notes

Although Sidney Craig has sold Dr Devious to Zenya Yoshida for $6 million, the horse will race in Craig’s colors until he goes to stud. Dr Devious is one of the favorites in the Breeders’ Cup Turf. . . . Rodrigo De Triano, an English horse who will run in the Classic, has been sold by Robert Sangster to the Japan Racing Assn. for $6.2 million. Sangster was one of Dr Devious’ owners before Craig.

Sudden Hush, scheduled to run with his more publicized stablemate, Gilded Time, in the Juvenile, has suffered from a fever since arriving from California and probably won’t run. . . . The handlers of Reign Road, who hope that he will come off of the alternates’ list to run in the Classic, have supplemented him into Sunday’s $100,000 Sunday Silence Handicap at Gulfstream.

Foremost Thoroughbreds

Records of horses who have run in four Breeders’ Cup races.

PRECISIONIST

Year Race Track Finish 1984 Classic Hollywood Park 7th 1985 Sprint Aqueduct 1st 1986 Classic Santa Anita 3rd 1988 Sprint Churchill Downs 5th

EL SENOR

Year Race Track Finish 1988 Turf Churchill Downs 6th 1989 Turf Gulfstream Park 7th 1990 Turf Belmont Park 3rd 1991 Turf Churchill Downs 9th