ROYAL LADY IN WAITING Speed queen Aurelia can take centre stage at Ascot

And trainer Wesley Ward is no less bullish about Lady Aurelia’s prospects of a repeat triumph on the Royal heath on Tuesday.

“With horses, you can get off course, but this filly has just been aces,” said the American, now as much a part of the glittering five-day fixture as Aidan O’brien or Sir Michael Stoute.

“She’s sailed through, every breeze being better, with the last one being best of all. She’s done everything right.”

Twelve months ago, Lady Aurelia’s Queen Mary Stakes win was as emphatic as any gained in Ascot’s 300-year history.

Even Frankie Dettori was lost for words. Tuesday’s King’s Stand Stakes, for which Lady Aurelia is the bookies’ 3-1 favourite, is open to all ages and genders – the Queen Mary is just for two-year-old fillies.

But Ward, the former Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey who has gone on to make his name as the master trainer of sprinters, is adamant.

“I think she is up to the task. As a kid – I was 16 – I was able to get on a horse named John Henry one morning,” says Ward, recalling the two-time Horse Of The Year legend, inducted into the US Hall Of Fame in 1990.

“I tell ya, being on that guy and Lady Aurelia – there’s lots of similarities.

“He was a little guy as well, but you could feel the strength of the horse – this is 30-plus years ago – when he galloped off. If you look at weightlifting – they might be both the same size, but one weightlifter can lift twice as much as the other. That’s what she would be.”

Lady Aurelia backed up last year’s Ascot romp with a hard-fought call in Deauville’s Prix Morny, but burst a blood vessel that September contesting the six-furlong Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket.

She made a fluent return at Keeneland this April, and Ward enthused: “She won her comeback brilliantly.

“There are always questions from age two to three – if they are as good as they were – but the numbers she ran, and visually, it was a very, very impressive race.”

With Dettori sidelined temporarily with a bruised shoulder, Ryan Moore rode Lady Aurelia in a workout at Ascot last Wednesday.

“She walked in like she owned the place,” smiled Ward. “She just pricked her ears in the air and sailed on home.

“Ryan said he was amazed. Maybe he was hoping Frankie’s shoulder was hurting a bit more!”

Ward boasts three Queen Mary Stakes among his seven Royal Ascot wins.

And he rates Happy Like A Fool, who contests Wednesday’s renewal of the race, as the strongest of the nine who have come over with Lady Aurelia from California.

“It’s a race I’ve won three times and she [Happy Like A Fool] looks every bit as good as some of the ones I’ve won with in the past – I wouldn’t say as good as Lady Aurelia, but certainly the other two. She’s very fast.”

This filly has just been aces... I think she is up to the task