The global racing industry has been rocked by the news that Australia's greatest racehorse Black Caviar has been successfully cloned.

The Retnup Stem Cell Foundation (RSCF) today confirmed the legitimacy of diagnostic imaging depicting an early-term foal fetus of a Black Caviar replica.

Based on an ultrasound released yesterday, the RSCF has forecast that the clone will be due in mid-September, in a development that is likely to cast an unprecedented shadow of controversy over the 2014 spring carnival.

According to the RSCF, the scientific process behind the cloning is said to have involved molecular transfer technology to fuse Black Caviar's somatic cell - which contained the champion mare's complete DNA profile - to an egg collected from another donor mare. This fused egg was then transferred into a surrogate mother - an unraced thoroughbred that is agisting in an unspecified location somewhere along Victoria's surf coast - where it will continue to develop.

After the full-term of the pregnancy, it is expected that the surrogate mare will give birth as normal to an animal that is essentially the identical twin of Black Caviar. Sources within RSCF are confident that Black Caviar's most coveted attributes - including a huge lung capacity and hulking 620kg frame - will develop accordingly within the cloned animal.

Whilst embryonic stem cell research is being widely slated for use in organ repair and tissue transplants amongst humans, it's most famous usage remains in the animal kingdom, specifically when the female domestic sheep named Dolly was successfully cloned at the Roslin Institute in 1996.

An obsession with finding the next Black Caviar is said to have been the driving force behind the unprecedented scheme, which is believed to have commenced in late 2013 on the back of a landmark Tasmanian court ruling. In August a Tasmanian judge overturned the banning of cloned horses on the basis that such legislation breached antimonopoly laws, setting a precedent seized upon by the project's originators.

In a further twist, industry speculation is rife that finances accumulated by failed punters club ‘The Edge' may have played a significant part in funding the clandestine operation, with the club's figurehead proving an unabashed fan of relatives of Black Caviar at recent high-priced yearling sales.

Bill Vlahos and BC3 Thoroughbreds purchased Black Caviar's half-sister Belle Couture for $2.6 million at the 2012 Easter Yearling Sale before signing on the dotted line for a record $5 million half-brother to the three-time Australian Horse of the Year at the following year's Easter sales.

Victorian racing authorities have scrambled to launch their own investigation into today's stunning revelation, which they insist remains in breach of the rules of thoroughbred racing.