IT was not just the temperatures that were sizzling on day one at Royal Ascot. Two course record times and a juvenile record time were indicative of some excellent performances on the clock but also quite clearly of some particularly fast conditions.

It is not clear just how fast a major British course must be to be described as “firm” these days, though an official change from “good to firm, good in places” to “good to firm” all round after the opener was a small step in the right direction. There is no shame in returning “firm” as a description providing the ground is safe, as it was here.

One consequence was that those course records resulted in good timefigures, rather than outstanding timefigures, as even some beaten horses ducked under previous bests. Indeed, the best relative time of all came in a race in which the course record failed to be lowered, just.

Lady Aurelia missed Miss Andretti’s five-furlong course record – achieved in the same King’s Stand Stakes 10 years earlier – by just 100th of a second, stopping the clock at 57.45s and beating the very smart pair Profitable and Marsha by three lengths and a head.

That is seriously fast (averaging 39.2 mph, and with a slightly uphill penultimate furlong of about 11.0s or 40.9 mph) and results in a timefigure of 125, the fastest in Britain and Ireland so far this year though still below the 127 the filly ran when winning the Queen Mary Stakes by daylight on markedly easier going 12 months ago.

Any suggestion that Lady Aurelia had been just a precocious two-year-old went sharply out of the window here. Even one as quick as Marsha could not get near her under conditions as quick as these, though slightly easier ground might have seen a much better showing from Signs Of Blessing, who had given Profitable an even bigger beating the time before.