IN what was a quiet period leading into Royal Ascot close to home, by far the biggest story in the horseracing world came at Belmont Park in New York, where Justify became the 13th horse in history to win the US Triple Crown by adding the Belmont Stakes to his wins in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Much advance speculation, including from this corner, centred on Justify’s ability to see out the 12-furlong trip at Belmont, but in the event he prevailed at least as comfortably as he had at Churchill Downs and Pimlico, holding Gronkowski by a length and three quarters.

In both form and time terms, this was probably not quite as good as those previous two wins, with mid-race splits averaging 12.64s per furlong helping to conserve the Scat Daddy colt’s stamina for the business end.

Nonetheless, the pace was honest enough to result in a 98.2% last-three-furlong finishing speed, which is close to par, and the overall time ended up 0.43s faster than that recorded by the older horse Hoppertunity, carrying 5lbs less, in an admittedly steadily-run Grade 2 Brooklyn Invitational earlier on the card.

I have a 120 timefigure for Justify, compared to the 129 I think he is capable of at his best, with ex-Brit Gronkowski on 118, Hofburg on 116 and Vino Rosso on 115 (Hoppertunity gets just a 101 in this instance).

Justify has come from nowhere to dominate his age group, despite facing adversity, and is unmistakably high-class. But he may well find things tougher again when he returns from a well-earned break, especially if taking on older horses in the Breeders’ Cup. He is a giant of a horse, in both literal and metaphorical terms, but has not yet quite put up the one clock-busting effort usually associated with one of the all-time greats. That may well come.

elsewhere

Other very smart winning timefigures on the card came from Monomoy Girl (118 in the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes), Disco Partner (120 in the Grade 2 Jaipur Invitational), Still Having Fun (118 in the Grade 2 Woody Stephens Stakes) and Bee Jersey (117 in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap).

Meanwhile, Call To Mindstruck for British-trained raiders in the Belmont Gold Cup 24 hours earlier. It is not possible to put a precise timefigure on this effort, at a little-used two-mile distance, but Call To Mind had run a 114 behind Stradivarius at York on his previous start and this was likely to have been no higher than that.