JUST a week into the new racing season in August, an uninspired Lee Freedman shocked the race world when he handed in his trainer's licence to seek out new horizons and uncover different challenges.

None doubted he would return to the sport he first conquered with his three brothers in the late 1980s, but few would have predicted the timing or foreseen his new role.

Only Bart Cummings has won more Melbourne Cups than the five claimed by fellow Hall of Fame trainer Freedman, but even when he went through his horror years in the 1980s of bankruptcy and a series of Melbourne Cup failures, Cummings never dared to change the stable's pecking order. But Freedman did and how.

His new role, under his young brother Anthony, is of stable strapper for just one horse in the immense Freedman team - a horse named Lucas Cranach. He is one of two German horses that are part of the the largest international thoroughbred force ever expected to contest the Melbourne Cup, on November 1. But it is Lucas Cranach who is at the centre of attention and not simply because of his vastly over-qualified handler.

Lucas Cranach has been backed from an opening quote of $151 in June to the second line of betting at $11 for Australia's most famous race. He has had to travel long distances since Freedman escorted him from the quarantine centre at Newmarket in England in the last week of September. ''He's had more moves than Boris Spassky,'' Freedman noted yesterday in a reference to the chess grandmaster.

Only three internationally trained horses have won the Melbourne Cup since Irish horse Vintage Crop became the first in 1993, but Freedman senses another is set to strike.

''I think he's capable of winning [the Melbourne Cup],'' Freedman said. ''He's a very easygoing horse. As long as he has us around he is fine as we've been the constant since he left Germany. He travelled really well considering he is such an inexperienced horse.''

Lucas Cranach was purchased by Australian Bloodstock for a number of willing local clients in late July for the sole purpose of running in the Melbourne Cup. Little did they know then that the horse's day-to-day companion would be the world's most famous and highest-paid strapper.

Already at the Werribee quarantine centre - where the international challengers for the spring spend a mandatory two weeks away from the general horse public - are 12 carnival contenders, and in nine days they will be joined by six or seven more, including two Europeans from Sheikh Mohammed's Godolphin yard. It is expected that, for the first time, more than half the 24-strong Melbourne Cup field will be from overseas.