By Brenton Le Grand
The Tony Gollan-prepared Skirt The Law will be heading to Melbourne in the spring.
She was 'only' a $170,000 purchase at the yearling sales last year but the Tony Gollan-trained filly Skirt The Law more than repaid connections in just her first preparation.
The daughter of Better Than Ready won with consummate ease at Doomben on debut in November before a dominant five length romp there three weeks later. She was then too good for them in the $2 million Magic Millions race for juveniles in January, taking her earnings over the $1.6 million mark in the process.
Following that lucrative victory Gollan opted bring her to Sydney to contest the Group 2 Sweet Embrace where she was well in the market, but the two-year-old had plenty of excuses for her lacklustre performance at Royal Randwick that day.
"She pulled up with quite a nasty bruise inside heal so her post race recovery was terrible, which is very unusual for her," Gollan told Radio TAB on Tuesday morning.
"She actually pulled up lame once she cooled down the next day and on the Monday.
"We could've tried to patch her up and keep heading towards the (Golden) Slipper, but we just felt she'd had a really busy time. She'd had minimal time in paddocks.
"I thought if we gave her a good spell and bring her back we'd have a really nice three-year-old on our hands and I think that's what we got."
With some well-earned time off under her belt Skirt The Law will now look down south to commence her spring campaign and Gollan has a clear idea of the races he will target.
"The plan is to give her a couple of runs early in the spring at this point in time the three-year-old fillies 1100 metres at Caulfield, the Quezette," Gollan said.
"She'll trial in July and then she'll head down to Melbourne probably the week before, we'll give her a couple of reverse gallops here in Brisbane.
"(We'll) just get her back, get her up to the grade and then we'll see where we're at after a couple of runs.
"No doubt the grand final for all of these three-year-olds is probably something like the Coolmore at the end."
Regular rider Ryan Maloney was on board for all four of her starts when last in work, but Gollan explained they might not be able to synchronise their watches this time in.
"It just depends, Ryan has a few commitments in Sydney this spring," Gollan said.
"So whether she clashes with him or not we'll work that out as we get closer to lock it in her programme completely."
As to if he believes she has come on since she was last in the stables, Gollan couldn't be more impressed with his filly's development.
"She's a lovely strong filly now, she's definitely grown a little bit but she's thickened right up," Gollan said.
"She's a whole lot bigger beast of a filly than what I had last time and she's got a really good mental space as well about her.
"(I'm) pleased with the way she's come back off that good spell, which is what she needed."