To understand why Australian Bloodstock had such conviction in Wine Dark Sea, you need to look at what this horse has already done on the track. He is a track record holder at Carlisle, and the manner in which he set that record is what really turns heads. He won eased down. Not grinding it out, not scrapping through to the line, but eased down by thirteen lengths. Thirteen. When a horse is winning by that kind of margin with his jockey sitting still and not asking a serious question, you are not watching an ordinary animal. You are watching something with a tank that has barely been opened.

That is the core of the Wine Dark Sea story and it is the quality that has Australian Bloodstock so confident about what lies ahead. A horse that wins eased down by double figures is a horse with a serious ceiling. He has not been asked to find the bottom of himself yet. Nobody truly knows how good he is, and that is an extraordinary thing to be able to say about a horse preparing to contest the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup. His sire Ulysses was a Group One performer of the highest class, tough, talented and a horse that excelled at a genuine staying trip. That bloodline is built for the big days and the long distances, and Wine Dark Sea looks to be carrying that DNA in the most convincing way possible.

The photography captured by Edward Whitaker for the Racing Post has given racing fans around the world a proper look at this horse, and the images tell their own story. Whitaker is the best in the business at capturing not just what a horse looks like but what a horse feels like, and the shots of Wine Dark Sea carry that presence. Credit where it is due, the Racing Post and Whitaker have given this horse's story a stage it deserves.

So what happens next? The plan is straightforward and sensible. Wine Dark Sea will be given an easy time of it over the coming weeks. No pressure, no rush, just time to strengthen, relax and be a horse. Then in early September he heads into quarantine in preparation for the trip to Australia. First stop, the Caulfield Cup. Then, all going to plan, the Melbourne Cup with its ten million dollar prize pool sitting there as the ultimate target.

At a race like the Melbourne Cup, the question is always about genuine stayers and genuine form. Wine Dark Sea ticks both boxes. He has beaten a world-class opponent. He is lightly raced with enormous upside. He is by a sire built for Cup racing. And he has not yet been fully extended on a racecourse. That combination of factors is exactly what you want to see in a Melbourne Cup contender and it is why he is already shaping as one of the horses to beat.

For punters in Newcastle and right across Australia, this is the type of story that makes spring racing special. A horse coming out of left field, carrying unfamiliar colours, with connections who believed in him when nobody else did. That is the romance of the Cup. That is exactly why eighty thousand people pack into Flemington every November. Wine Dark Sea is coming, and if what we have seen so far is any indication, he is bringing something very serious with him.