David Hayes capped off a tremendous day at Caulfield when the horse he says is the best bred filly in Australia perhaps proved herself to be simply the best filly in the country with a slashing win in the group 1 1000 Guineas.
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The filly in question is Stay With Me, a daughter of Street Cry and the former Hayes-trained champion Miss Finland who, as a three-year-old, won the Thousand Guineas en route to taking out the VRC Oaks in 2006.
Hayes had earlier in the afternoon scored in another of the day's group 1 races, the Caulfield Stakes, with the globetrotting Criterion.
Stay With Me, an $8 chance ridden by Dwayne Dunn, could possibly try to follow in her mother's hoofprints, although Hayes does not, at this stage, think it likely.
Instead she could be targeted at shorter group 1 contests during the Melbourne Cup carnival: the Wakeful Stakes over 2000 metres against three-year-old fillies is one option, the Mackinnon Stakes over the same trip against older horses is another, while a third is the Myer Classic, a 1600m race confined to fillies and mares. She will not, however, be aimed at the Cox Plate - another race Miss Finland took in along the journey.
"I purposely left her out of the Cox Plate [so as] not to tumble into that. We have got the Myer, the Wakeful or the Mackinnon to look at. She's a group 1 winner now, we have just got to pick the one we want to go for now.
"Maybe we could go to the Oaks, but my gut feel is to keep her shorter in the spring.
"Days like today make it all worthwhile. We have been perilously close to having a huge day and it shaped up pretty well today," Hayes said.
Caulfield trainer Ciaran Maher's filly Jameka ($8.50) came from off the pace to run second under Mark Zahra, with $5.50 shot Badawiya, from the Mick Price yard, third.
