IT takes something special to eclipse a good winner of the world’s oldest classic, the winner of the Irish Champion Stakes, and the winners of numerous other high profile Group races in the past week, but the two-year-old Pinatubo managed to do just that.

He is not just any old two-year-old, on that we can surely all agree. He is unbeaten, he is getting better with each run, and his win in the Group 1 Goffs Vincent O’Brien National Stakes by nine lengths from two Group 2 winners was simply sensational.

But, when it comes to quantifying such a performance (or any performance, for that matter), we need to deal with facts not emotions and sentiment. What do the facts say about Pinatubo’s remarkable romp?

Well, his overall time was fast, very fast: it was fully 2.46s (about 15 lengths) quicker than Love managed in the preceding Moyglare Stud Stakes and was only 0.11s/furlong slower than the older filly Fairyland managed earlier on the card in the Flying Five at two furlongs shorter.

Pinatubo’s sectionals were also fast, though mostly in line with what you would expect given that overall time. Using advanced video analysis, I had him running his last five sections in: 11.25s, 11.33s, 11.02s, 10.80s and, finally, 11.87s, for a total of 56.27s from an admittedly rolling start.

For anyone wishing to keep feet on the ground – a sensible idea at all times, I find – it should be pointed out that just behind those two Group 2 winners (Armory and Arizona) left trailing in Pinatubo’s wake was Monoski, who had last been seen finishing fourth in a nursery at York off a BHA mark of 93.

Whatever you rate Pinatubo, Monoski was 1.85s – about 35lbs – behind him on final times (and on sectionals, for that matter). That does somewhat limit any assessment, unless you think that Monoski improved, which is possible.

Weighing up all of the above, and a bit more besides, I came down on a 129 timefigure for Pinatubo, edged up to 130 on account of those slick late sectionals and a finishing speed of 104.1% of his average race speed.

That figure is unprecedented in recent years, though I had Frankel on 135 after his Royal Lodge win, long before I was writing on these pages. You have to go back to the last century, and to the likes of Celtic Swing, Arazi and Xaar, for other examples of something similar.

In summary, Pinatubo does indeed look brilliant, on the numbers and not just on the visuals, if perhaps not quite as brilliant as some have made out. It is unlikely that anything will beat him in the remainder of the year, or even get all that near to him.

Regarding next year, he is already well up to Guineas-winning level, but it is worth noting that his stride frequency is pretty high (in a very narrow range of between 2.45 and 2.37 on Sunday) and that calls into serious doubt his chance of staying the Derby distance, for which he is also ante-post favourite.