There’s already a spring in the step of Volkstok’n’barrell to go with a change in attitude that will see him a more complete racing package next season.

Trainer and part-owner Donna Logan has recently welcomed her star performer back into her Ruakaka quarters to prepare for the Melbourne carnival later in the year.

“He’s bigger and stronger and I honestly haven’t seen him so well,” she said. “He’s bouncing around, but he is much more mentally mature and he knows what he’s here for – he knows he’s a racehorse now.”

There have been unsuccessful attempts to buy the Tavistock gelding and Logan also dismissed a more recent notion that Volkstok'n'barrell had been sold – “definitely not,” she said.

He was the stakes winner of five of his eight starts at home before he went to Sydney in the autumn off the back of his runner-up finish to Mongolian Khan in the Gr.1 New Zealand Derby.

Volkstok’n’barrell beat the Gr.1 VRC Derby winner Preferment in his Australian debut in the Gr.1 Rosehill Guineas before he was third in the Gr.1 ATC Derby.

His four-year-old aim will be the Gr.1 Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in October with his lead in to the weight-for-age feature yet to be locked away.

“We are looking through the programmes and he may kick off in Melbourne, rather than New Zealand, but the Cox Plate is the target,” Logan said. “It’s very, very exciting and he’s a reason to get up every morning.”

Meanwhile, former stable favourite Habibi has finished a close last-start second at Woodbine in her third North American appearance. She is now in the stable of the leading Canadian trainer Mark Frostad.

Logan still has strong ties to her 2013 New Zealand Derby winner with her half-sister Malala, placed once in four runs this season, and her unraced half-brother Vicente in her care.