Saratoga: Sensible Lady rallies wide for Coronation Cup victory

Barbara D. Livingston

Sensible Lady wins the Coronation Cup on Monday. For winning rider Xavier Perez, it was his first race at Saratoga.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Sensible Lady added Saratoga to the growing list of turf courses she has conquered, rallying widest of all turning for home under Xavier Perez and drawing clear to win Monday’s $100,000 Coronation Cup by 2 3/4 lengths.

Kiss in the Forest, who set the pace, held second by a half-length over Spun Cap.

The win was the seventh from 12 starts for Sensible Lady, a daughter of Street Sense owned by Matt Lyons and trained by the Maryland-based Timothy Salzman. It was the first win at Saratoga for both Salzman and Perez. For Perez it was the first race he had ridden here.

In six turf starts, Sensible Lady has won five times, winning twice at Pimlico, and once at Colonial, Penn National, and now Saratoga.

“It’s Saratoga - this is where you want to come to win,” Salzman said.

Perez said he wanted to keep Sensible Lady closer to the pace than he was able to “because speed was holding all day.” But in order to do that, Perez had to put Sensible Lady in the three path down the backside, then into the four path around the turn and into the stretch.

But Sensible Lady sustained her run, made the lead inside the eighth pole, and drew clear to the victory.

Sensible Lady covered the 5 1/2 furlongs in 1:03.14 over a Mellon turf course labeled good. She returned $8.30 as the second choice.

“The reason I went wide was because I saw everybody packed on the inside,” Perez said. “I made the decision to swing wide again, but she was running. She was the one running more at the end. I made that decision and rode with it, and it worked out pretty good.”

Salzman said that Sensible Lady would be pointed to the $200,000 Turf Amazon for fillies and mares at five furlongs at Parx on Sept. 3