IT takes quite something for a two-year-old to upstage an older Group 1 winner, but that is what Calyx arguably achieved by winning the Coventry Stakes on what was just his second racecourse appearance.

It was not just what he did but how he did it that impressed, as he burst several lengths clear of the others on his side of the course to beat those on the opposite side somewhere between readily and handsomely.

There is a very strong possibility that the son of Kingman is even better than the bare form makes him look, and that had been very much the case when he had run sensational sectionals at Newmarket just 10 days earlier.

In terms of raw time, this Coventry win was good but not great – I have a timefigure of 106 on Calyx for it – and in terms of sectionals it can at least be argued that second and third, Advertise and Sergei Prokofiev (both 102), were further back than ideal at the two-furlong marker.

But the probability is that we saw a trio of smart colts here – their previous efforts, and not just Tuesday’s, suggest as much – and that Calyx will confirm himself the best of them by some way. He really could not be much more exciting.

QUEEN ANNE

By comparison, the opening Queen Anne Stakes was puzzling, rather than exhilarating, unless you were connected with or had backed one of the principals, of course!

The time was the second-slowest for the race this decade, and the fact that all of those up with the pace at halfway dropped away made me imagine that they had gone too fast. But sectional analysis does not fully back that up.

It is only with a bit of creativity – assuming for convenience that the ground was slower on the first part of the straight than the second – that I could get Accidental Agent’s timefigure up to a semi-respectable 115, with another ex-handicapper in Lord Glitters in second on 113.

For whatever reason, the form of this year’s Queen Anne Stakes looks muddling, and it may be best to be cautious about it for now.

The last two races on Tuesday were quite a contrast on the stopwatch, with Lagostovegas winning a slowly-run Ascot Stakes Handicap with a timefigure of just 21 but the penalised Monarchs Glen looking a Group 1 or Group 2 contender in landing the Wolferton Stakes with a superb 123 performance.