Harry Charlton has never been to Australia, but that’s about to change with his stable’s Wine Dark Sea due to embark this Saturday on a long-haul to Melbourne for the G1 Caulfield Cup, followed by the race that stops the nation, the G1 Melbourne Cup on the first Tuesday in November.
That’s not to say Charlton doesn’t have any interest in or connection to the country or its deep horse racing heritage. How could he not when his brother Tom Charlton is nowadays co-training with renowned Sydney trainer John O’Shea?
“My brother travelled Withhold down there, and then never came back,” Charlton says, recalling the stayer his father Roger Charlton trained to contest the G3 Geelong Cup during an aborted Melbourne Cup trip in 2018.
The Sydney connection means he keeps track of his brother’s runners in New South Wales. Not so much Melbourne, though, so he’s not as familiar with Damian Lane’s day-to-day attributes beyond the knowledge that the Victoria-based champion is a world class rider with a pretty smart record when he rides in Japan. Pleased, then, that Lane is slated to take the Caulfield Cup reins on Wine Dark Sea. And there’s a connection there, too.
“I believe Damian Lane is booked to ride,” he says. “He has a good history in the race. Actually, he rode dad’s horse in the Melbourne Cup, Quest For More, when he was at the beginning of his career.”
Quest For More was ninth under Lane in Prince Of Penzance’s famous Cup, also off a Geelong lead-in. But Caulfield into Flemington is very much the plan for Wine Dark Sea, a progressive stayer – part-owned by breeder Dan Gilbert – which Australian Bloodstock, and then Sonny Grebe, bought into after he’d won a handicap at Ascot and the Cumberland Plate at Carlisle in June.
“The Caulfield Cup is the first aim,” Charlton says. “He’s midway through his quarantine, he’ll do two weeks of quarantine down there and I think he’s out five days before the Caulfield Cup.
“He started this year at Ascot and I thought he won very easily off a low weight but had some good horses in behind him like the horse of Haggas’s, Opportunity, that went on and won at Royal Ascot, and Valedictory of the Gosdens, so that was a strong race and he won pretty easily that day.
“And up at Carlisle he broke the track record under topweight, essentially on the bridle, and looked pretty good. That’s when he was sold.”
Gamble landed!
— At The Races (@AtTheRaces) August 15, 2026
Well-backed before the off, Wine Dark Sea bounces back to form in style in the Geoffrey Freer Stakes…@HectorCrouch @HarryJCharlton pic.twitter.com/G72sIZVnnP
The new owners might have been aware that the Cumberland Plate had been a stepping stone to Melbourne before: Hugs Dancer notably won the historic race in 2002 – beating future G1 Hong Kong Vase hero Collier Hill – and went on to finish fifth in a Melbourne Cup.
Charlton’s journey to becoming the master of Beckhampton Stables near Marlborough didn’t take him quite as far from home. He grew up in the yard where his father trained before him and alongside him before taking over the licence fully in 2024.
Roger Charlton himself took on the stable in 1990 and within no time at all had two Derby winners in a week: Sanglamore at Chantilly and Quest For Fame at Epsom, both for the late Khalid Abdullah.
“I was born five years before the Derby wins, so I do remember coming home from school to hear he won his 2nd Derby that week,” he says of his father’s early career.
“We’ve always lived in the yard, so that meant I had always been involved: myself and my brother have always been obsessed with horse racing. So we’ve always been a part of it and I do remember those early days more because of all the pictures on the walls. I could list you all of his winners, the dates, but it’s mainly from visual memory.”
His father’s roll of honour also included Group 1 winners Al Kazeem, Tamarisk, Avonbridge, Patavellian, Decorated Knight, Aspetar and Cityscape among others. Aspetar was down the field in a G1 Cox Plate and a G1 Hong Kong Vase, while Cityscape followed second place in the G1 Hong Kong Mile with victory in the G1 Dubai Duty Free.
“I’ve done a few of those Hong Kong trips,” Charlton says.
Given Wine Dark Sea’s Australian ownership element, the obvious thought is that the four-year-old will perhaps remain Down Under after the Cup. Charlton is unsure at this stage whether that will be so or not, there are two races coming up, the results of which will go a long way to determining what will happen on that front.
And if the gelding does head back to Beckhampton, there’s always the chance he might stop off in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Vase on the way home, just as Melbourne Cup warriors before him have done, including Dunaden who completed that Flemington/Sha Tin double, Americain and Red Cadeaux.
For now, the focus is the cups at Caulfield, then Flemington, and Charlton’s maiden visit to Australia. ∎
