While three-year-olds Shamus Award, Zoustar and Long John rose to prominence with Group One wins in the spring, trainer Tony Vasil was left licking his wounds with boom colt Prince Harada.
Vasil is convinced Prince Harada is the real deal and hopes he proves it in his upcoming campaign where the Group One Australian Guineas (1600m) will be his first major target in 2014.
Prince Harada was an impressive winner of his first two starts in off-season races and showed enough talent for Vasil to declare him potentially one of the best horses he had trained.
A son of Vasil’s former star Haradasun, the colt was a luckless second in the McNeil Stakes after striking severe interference in the straight.
He then could only manage fifth behind Zoustar in the Group One Golden Rose (1400m) in Sydney and was never a force in the Group One Caulfield Guineas (1600m), finishing sixth behind Long John with subsequent Cox Plate winner Shamus Award third.
Vasil said Prince Harada had put on 35kg in his time off after his spring campaign and also appeared more mentally mature.
“He’s going through the cycle of getting fit and he looks fantastic,” Vasil said.
“The goal is the Australian Guineas in the short term. He won’t have too many runs before that race with the thought of taking him to Sydney.”
Vasil put Prince Harada’s fruitless spring down to a number of things.
“It was a combination of not much luck, barriers that didn’t suit him and probably at the end of the day he was still six months away from being what he potentially looks to be,” he said.
“He’s a Group One horse waiting to happen.”
Prince Harada’s father Haradasun had a memorable autumn three-year-old campaign.
After racing four times in Melbourne, including a fourth in the Australian Guineas, Haradasun went to Sydney and took out the Group One George Ryder Stakes and Doncaster Mile before finishing second to Desert War in the Group One Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m).
The Doncaster and Queen Elizabeth have received prize money injections for 2014 with the Doncaster worth $3 million and the Queen Elizabeth $4 million.
