Aqueduct: Sweet Reason successful in first start of season

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - It might have been harder than it appeared it would be on paper, but it was a successful return to the races nonetheless for the Grade 1-winning filly Sweet Reason on Friday at raw Aqueduct.

Kept outside and in the clear by jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., Sweet Reason, despite being floated four-to-five wide entering the stretch, ran down pacesetting Aqua Regia to win a $69,000 allowance race by one-half length. It was four lengths back to 30-1 shot Wraith in third.

Sweet Reason, last year’s Grade 1 Spinaway winner, was making her first start since running fourth as the favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies last Nov. 2 at Santa Anita. Friday’s race was scripted as a stepping-stone to the Grade 2, $300,000 Gazelle here on April 5.

Having rallied from well off the pace in her previous four starts, Sweet Reason found herself relatively close to a pedestrian pace on Friday. Ortiz, who had twice worked Sweet Reason but never had ridden her in a race, kept her three-wide down the backside as Aqua Regia set fractions of 24.52 seconds for the quarter and 51.01 for the half-mile.

Leaving the three-eighths pole, the pace picked up a little bit and approaching the quarter pole, Ballylee, under Jose Ortiz, carried out Sweet Reason into the four - or five-path. Irad Ortiz got to riding Sweet Reason and without feeling the leather of Ortiz’s whip Sweet Reason was able to overtake Aqua Regia inside the sixteenth pole to get the victory. Sweet Reason ran her final quarter in about 23 seconds and covered a mile in 1:40.11. Sweet Reason, a daughter of Street Sense owned by Jeff Treadway, returned $2.30 to win and had $398,843 wagered to show on her from $425,884.

“It was a little nail-biting because you aren’t expecting it to be quite that close,” trainer Leah Gyarmati said. “I thought it was great because she learned to gradually pick it up, sit there next to horses. She broke super so that went well. She ran great. She was supposed to run good and she did.”

Ortiz said he kept Sweet Reason wide because he knew she was the best horse in the field and didn’t want to get trapped on the inside.

“I don’t want to be clear with her all the way but I don’t have any other choice. I don’t want to get stuck on the inside,” Ortiz said. “I’m going pretty good, a little wide on the last turn but always I feel I got horse and once I asked her she took off. I didn’t hit her because I didn’t feel anybody on the outside and I knew I had the other one. I showed her [the whip] one time to make sure she passed the other one.”