After much deliberation, the Trent Busuttin and Natalie Young stable elected to stay in three-year-old company with Pascero at Caulfield.

Also entered in the weight-for-age Group 3 Bletchingly Stakes (1200m) on Saturday, the stable elected to run the colt in the Senet Gambling Law Experts Handicap over the same journey instead.

After studying the field for the Bletchingly, Busuttin and Young reasoned Pascero, with 58kg under the WFA scale, was too close to Group 1 winner Streets Of Avalon (58.5kg) at the weights.

“First Light (the owners of Pascero) were keen to have a crack being a Group 3 and it would have been worth it on his first-up run,” Young said.

“He was far too close to a horse like Streets Of Avalon in the weights, so we’ve gone this way instead.”

Pascero has raced only the five times for a maiden and benchmark 64 grade wins at Sandown, but Busuttin and Young hold him in high esteem.

After his Sandown win on February 2, Pascero headed to stakes level in the Group 3 C S Hayes Stakes (1400m) at Flemington, only to be run down late by Pinstriped.

Busuttin and Young hope Pascero will get to stakes level this campaign and may consider the Group 2 P B Lawrence Stakes (1400m) at Caulfield on August 13.

“He will be up and ready before the likes of Forgot You and a few of our other colts, so the Lawrence could be on the agenda,” Young said.

“But we’ll get through this run first, see how he goes and hopefully get his rating up.”

With a handicap rating of 78, Pascero would struggle to get into many of the early weight-for-age races and that was part of the plan to get the colt up and running early.

Young said Pascero had been scheduled to run at Flemington last week, but a bad blood picture put a stop to that.

“We took another one on Tuesday and it was back to perfect, and he galloped super,” Young said.

“Going into Saturday he’s primed, he’s bouncing and he’s looking fantastic.”