NOT yet. If you’re wondering.

Winning two races at Royal Ascot, including the Group 1 King’s Stand, has not sunk for trainer Wesley Ward.

Nine days after Lady Aurelia scorched rivals in the King’s Stand and eight days after Con Te Partiro upset the Sandringham, Ward was back at his Keeneland base trying to get back to normal life. Top hat traded for baseball cap, coattails for shirtsleeves – Superman’s cape is in the closet.

“It still hasn’t set in,” Ward said. “You know how it goes when you’re trying to do this and that, cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s, get home, then you get the jet lag, it’s just starting to settle down now, we’ll get a chance to reflect and take it all in, everything that got done. It was just amazing, really, to win a race like that in that fashion.”

Yes, in that fashion.

In a week of star performances, Lady Aurelia’s domination in the five-furlong King’s Stand was the highlight, at least for Ward and anybody rooting from these shores. The three-year-old filly improved her career record to five-for-six with a three-length win under Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez.

“You’re sort of expecting it, for it to actually come true is unbelievable,” Ward said. “I’ve never won the Derby, but as far as the Breeders’ Cup and other races, to me, I wouldn’t trade anything for Royal Ascot. It’s an honour.”

Last year, Lady Aurelia used her speed to dominate the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes. She broke like all Ward-trained horses – like flicking a switch – and blazed to a seven-length win under Frankie Dettori.

“Last year, she used her speed throughout the whole race,” Ward said. “Frankie had her throttled down from the word go.”

This year, Ward has tried to temper that approach, taking off the blinkers (as he does with all his two-year-old when they turn three) and utilising the soft hands of exercise rider Julio Garcia in the morning to teach the daughter of Scat Daddy composure.

It worked in her three-year-old debut when she settled and closed to win the Giant’s Causeway Stakes at Keeneland.

Now, she is anything but a one-trick pony.

“This year, she settles and uses that punch when she needs it, she’s unbelievable how she’s matured in her mind. At Ascot, speed is one thing, but when you’re in front, they come get you, they just can’t carry, especially with the older horses,” Ward said.

“She hopped a little at the start and then Johnny was able to get her to settle down and then she just…for me, watching it though, after she went a quarter, it was almost like, ‘ahaaahahhaa’ you don’t know if it’s her settling her or her not being good enough.

“When she got up closer to them, that was a little bit of a relief, then all of a sudden, when Johnny tapped her on the shoulder there, when she kicked on, it was an exhilarating feeling.”

One that Ward appreciated, enjoyed, revelled in as it unfolded, which is different from the first few years when Ward was poking the ground looking to plant the American flag in the hallowed ground of Royal Ascot. Back then, Ward struggled to watch.

“It has changed, it really has. At first, I was wanting to hide in the corner and watch the replay,” Ward said. “There’s always that little apprehension when they’re going in the gate, the whole unknown, some trainers and some owners will go hide in the bathroom because they don’t want to jinx anything and I used to be a little like that.

“But now, with the luck I’ve had there, I know that I brought that horse to the race in the best condition, it’s an unknown but I sit and take it all in, win lose or draw, I enjoy it. If they win, it’s a very, very overjoyous feeling, I really watch my horse in that race and enjoy it.”

A day after Lady Aurelia, Ward enjoyed watching the Sandringham when Con Te Partiro rallied late under a patient Jamie Spencer to give Ward his ninth career victory at Royal Ascot.

Perhaps the accomplishments of last week haven’t sunk in, but just as he did in 2009 when he became the first American trainer to win a race at Royal Ascot, Ward is planning, always planning.

Accountants design their calendars around April, bartenders at last call, Santa Claus at Christmas of course. Wesley Ward? Always June.

“My better horses that ran well, we’re going to set the schedules now, namely Lady Aurelia, that’s why I want to forgo going to the Everest, because I just don’t want to compromise her chances for next year to go back to Royal Ascot,” Ward said.

“The travelling all the way to another hemisphere, it might zap her for what we need to repeat again. We might try to go next year to culminate what we’ve done in Australia. But I’m already thinking about next year, for her, in the King’s Stand.

“Royal Ascot is the top, this is where it’s at, I want other people to come over and get that feeling. It’s the pinnacle of horse racing in the world.”