[5] As a yearling the colt was entered in the Newmarket Autumn Sale but failed to reach his reserve price and was returned to his breeder.
Ridden by the fifty-year-old veteran Joe Mercer he started a 25/1 outsider but finished third of the ten runners behind Nomination and Green Desert.
Having apparently failed to stay the distance at Newcastle, the colt was brought back to six furlongs for the Gimcrack Stakes at York Racecourse on 21 August.
With Mercer again in the saddle he took the lead from the start and set a strong pace, showing what Timeform described as "blistering speed" and drawing away in the closing stages to win by four lengths from Storm Star.
[2] In the Mill Reef Stakes at Newbury on 21 September Stalker started at odds of 10/1 in a nine-runner field headed by Green Desert.
The Harry Thomson Jones-trained Alkaaseh started the 6/4 favourite with Stalker next in the betting on 9/2 ahead of Luqman and Silvino (third in the Royal Lodge Stakes) with the other two runners being Pop the Cork and Laird o' Montrose.
In their annual Racehorses of 1985 Timeform described him as "thoroughly game and dependable" but suggested that his small size and excitable temperament made him unlikely to make into a top-class three-year-old.