LADY Aurelia might have been the one to have the wow factor in visual terms on the opening day at Royal Ascot (the rest of the meeting will be covered in next week’s Time Will Tell), but Barney Roy was nearly as impressive on the clock in the St James’s Palace Stakes, especially given that sectionals show he, and those he beat, probably could have gone faster.

Nonetheless, the Richard Hannon-trained colt lowered the previous track record for the round mile by 1.10s, a substantial amount for the distance. His resulting timefigure of 118 means that Lancaster Bomber and Thunder Snow get timefigures of 116 and 115 respectively, the latter just below his 118 when second, beaten more than a length further by Churchill, in the Irish 2000 Guineas at the Curragh.