Multiple Grade 3 winner Stage Colony was euthanized on February 15 due to complications from colic. He was 22 and stood in South Africa for many years.

Owners Edmond and Sharon Hudon retired Stage Colony to Old Friends, a Thoroughbred retirement facility in Georgetown, Kentucky, last November. The Pleasant Colony horse out of the placed Stage Door Johnny mare Meteor Stage previously stood at Doug Arnold’s Buck Pond Farm in Versailles, Kentucky.

Stage Colony was a very handsome bay stallion and a son of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Pleasant Colony. Stage Colony himself was a Grade III winner of over $300,000.

“Stage Colony could have certainly stayed at Buck Pond. They would have made provisions for us,” Sharon Hudon said. “But at Old Friends, we knew that he would get a lot of attention from all the visitors there every day and lots of treats, and that’s what we wanted for him.”

The Hudons visited Stage Colony nearly every week at Old Friends.

“It’s very sad,” Sharon Hudon said. “But we’ve been in the horse business a long time, and we know this is, unfortunately, what happens sometimes.”

Stage Colony concluded his four-year racing career in 1992 with $327,908 in purse earnings and ten wins in 33 starts. The bay horse earned his first graded stakes victory in the 1990 Rutgers Handicap (G3) at Meadowlands, and also captured the ’91 Fort Marcy Handicap (G3) at Aqueduct.

Bred in Virginia by T.M. Evans, Stage Colony’s 14 crops of racing age include 276 foals. His 110 starters have produced 85 winners that have earned $4,821,792 in purse earnings through Monday.

Stage Colony is the sire of eight stakes winners and eight stakes-placed winners. His top progeny include South African Group 1 winner and champion stayer Colonial Girl and multiple stakes winners Stage Player, Black Bart, and Love to Tell.

“We’re very sad to have lost one of our newest friends,” said Michael Blowen, Old Friends’s president and founder. “The Hudons are wonderful people and we can’t thank them enough for allowing Stage Colony to spend his final days here. Every horse should be that fortunate—to be cared for with the devotion they showed him.”

Stage Colony was a full brother to 1991 champion two-year-old filly and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1) winner Pleasant Stage and multiple graded stakes winner Colonial Play, dam of Canadian Grade 1 winner Marsh Side.-Old Friends/Thoroughbred Times/SAHorseracing.COM