A promising gelding, the trainer has remained patient as he slowly matured both mentally and physically.

His recent progress has been encouraging, The Guru winning the Kembla Grange heat of the Summer Provincial Series in early December.

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He built on that performance last weekend, finishing third at Randwick.

For Bateup, the showing was a sign her runner can mix it in the city grade.

"He's a horse we always thought would develop into a nice horse," Bateup said. "He's been slow to develop mentally and physically but he's grown into a nice horse now.

"His run last week at Randwick was super. Once he gets out to 2000m, he'll be a genuine city class horse."

The Guru is set for a new challenge in Saturday's 1600m Summer Provincial Series final at Wyong.

With horses having qualified through five heats over the past two months, a number of highly-fancied runners will line up.

Kris Lees dominates the field with five entrants, including last year's winner Occupy, while Kim Waugh will start highly-fancied pair Knight and Trajection.

Lees has long dominated provincial racing, while Waugh has steadily built a talented stable in recent years.

It's a path Bateup has followed closely, the trainer looking forward to taking on her bigger and better-resourced rivals.

"It's a challenge, but we'll try to beat them. Kris has a nice team of horses and Kim as well. Her runners haven't put a foot wrong since they qualified. They'll be very hard to beat.

"I've watched Kim closely, she's done a great job. She didn't start with a huge band of horses or great quality horses, but she's done a good job in building her stable up and she has nice city-class horses."

The Guru will be the lone Kembla Grange runner to line up for Saturday's final, Robert and Luke Price scratching Accoy after a mid-week veterinary inspection.

The Prices will instead travel to Randwick with talented three-year-old Count De Rupee for a 1300m benchmark 72 on the Kensington track.

Coming off a fifth-place finish in the Wyong Magic Millions three and four-year-old stakes, Luke Price is confident the gelding will be in the mix on Saturday.

"He has to go to the next level now," Price said. "It's all good to win impressively on your home track, but now he has to do it in the city.

"This race looks set up nicely for him. Tom Sherry's claim to bring us back to 54kg certainly helps. He knows he's in a race on Saturday, hopefully he'll step up."