Royal Ascot winner Scenic Blast is close to a return to training with trainer Danny Morton planning a winter carnival campaign for the sprinter.

Now an elder statesman of Australia’s sprinting ranks, Scenic Blast will be given another chance to regain the form that three years ago made him an international force.

“He’s been on the water walker at Mornington and he’ll come back into work later this week,” Morton said.

“I’m looking at getting him ready for the sprints in Brisbane later in the year,” Morton said.

During a stellar first half of 2009, Scenic Blast claimed the Lightning Stakes and the Newmarket Handicap at Flemington and the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot to become Australian Horse of the Year.

But failures in Japan and a bleeding attack in Hong Kong led to a United States career where he was placed three times in five starts.

A rising eight-year-old, Scenic Blast returned to Morton’s care for a spring campaign last year but like every other horse racing against Black Caviar, he was reduced to a support role as the champion mare won the Schweppes Stakes and the Patinack Farm Classic.

“There’s a long way to go with him because he has got more than one issue,” Morton said.

Morton, meanwhile, nominated stablemates Scenic Shot and Bliss Street for races in two states at the weekend but they will stay in Melbourne instead of racing at Warwick Farm.

But he expects both horses to have some part to play in Sydney before the autumn carnival is finished.

“For Scenic Shot it will be like a stopover race on his way to Brisbane again.

“He’s a nine-year-old now and it’s fingers crossed with him but he’s an amazing horse who keeps fronting up.

“The only two big races he has missed in his life have been the Golden Slipper and the Doncaster.”

Morton expects Bliss Street to lift on her Armanasco Stakes effort when he runs in the Kewney Stakes at Flemington on Saturday.

“I’ve been a bit behind the eight-ball with her because she didn’t trial before her first run in Perth,” he said.

“She’s still got a lot of improvement in her.”