AIDAN O’Brien was claiming the Royal Ascot accolades again. As of yesterday he had five winners on the board, three more than John Gosden and William Haggas and Sir Michael Stoute, all on two.

All five winners were significant too. Not that a Royal Ascot winner is ever really insignificant, but there was a particular relevance to all four Ballydoyle winners between Tuesday and Friday.

Arizona, for starters, catapulted himself to the top of next year’s 2000 Guineas market when he won the Coventry Stakes. Southern Hills provided his sire Gleneagles with his first blacktype winner when he won the Windsor Castle Stakes.

South Pacific led home an Aidan O’Brien-trained one-two-three in the King George V Stakes.

Circus Maximus was an unusual winner of the St James’s Palace Stakes. Not because he was trained by Aidan O’Brien, but because he came via the Derby. Winner of the Dee Stakes, sixth in the Derby, winner of the St James’s Palace Stakes.

You don’t win the St James’s Palace Stakes after running in the Debry. Okay, so Dawn Approach did so in 2013, and Marju did it in 1991, but ordinarily, you don’t.

And, yesterday, Japan impressed in the King Edward VII Stakes. He could yet end up the best of the Ballydoyle three-year-old middle distance bunch.

Quiz time

Q. In what year was Frankie Dettori last crowned top jockey at Royal Ascot?