Joe Pride is prepared to disregard his own training manual in the hope of confirming his suspicions about the potential of Terravista.

Pride's usual template for the progression of a racehorse is based on patience.

But given he is nursing autumn carnival ambitions for Terravista, the trainer is keen to step him straight out of midweek company into a testing Saturday race and has settled on the Darley Bush Fire Support Handicap (1200m) at Randwick on Saturday.

"I've got him up a grade quicker than what I normally would with a lot of horses," Pride said.

"But I've got a fair bit of faith in this bloke's ability so I don't mind giving him his chance at this level.

"I usually try to milk a lot of wins out of horses along the way and take them slowly through their grades.

"But I just feel, because he's a four-year-old, I want to get him benchmarked up for the autumn and I don't want to take a lot of runs to do that."

Terravista has won two of his three starts and had excuses for his only defeat in April, which he emerged from with stress fractures.

A period of rest healed those and the gelding showed he was back on target with a first-up victory on the Kensington track at Randwick last month.

Hugh Bowman dismounted from him that day and declared Terravista one of the best horses he had ridden at a midweek program for some time.

That statement meant a lot to Pride.

"He's (Bowman) a hard marker. I've had him win races for me and I wait for him to come back and sort of build the owners' hopes up and he doesn't come to the party with the appraisal," Pride said with a laugh.

"But he seemed to have a really good opinion of him.

"It's fair to say I've got a really good opinion of him and hopefully he's going to make a good horse for us."

Terravista is early favourite for Saturday, ahead of last-start Brian Crowley Stakes winner Boss Lane and Faustus who made an encouraging return from a long spell when a fast-finishing second at Canterbury last month.