There may not have been any Australian challengers at Royal Ascot this year but the country's breeding programme can claim a significant share of success.

Choisir and Exceed And Excel - who both travelled from their native Australia to take on the best European sprinters in the early years of the millennium, with wildly varying results – have posted winners at the royal meeting this week.

Choisir supplied Coventry Stakes hero Rajasinghe, while Exceed And Excel was on the mark with Windsor Castle Stakes scorer Sound And Silence and Wokingham Handicap winner Out Do.

Those two sires' influence runs deep, as well. Choisir's daughter Laddies Poker Two, a Royal Ascot winner in the Wokingham Handicap of 2010, is the dam of Friday's authoritative Coronation Stakes winner Winter, while Exceed And Excel's stallion sons Excelebration and Helmet were represented by the first and third home in the St James's Palace Stakes on Tuesday, Barney Roy and Thunder Snow.

Other Australian sires Foxwedge and Lonhro made their presence felt this week too, through Ribblesdale Stakes third Hertford Dancer and Norfolk Stakes third Cardsharp.

Clearly, the influx of antipodean shuttlers in the new millennium has brought some welcome invigorating blood to the European stallion ranks.

But the benefits have not only been felt in the male line. When Australian Oaks third Hveger – a daughter of Danehill, also sire of Exceed And Excel and grandsire of Choisir and Foxwedge – produced the dual Group 1 runner-up Valdemoro to Encosta De Lago as her first foal, she caught the attention of those clever Coolmore partners who imported her to Ireland as a regular concubine for Galileo.

Mating Danehill mares to Galileo has been the most talked about cross of recent years, having produced 12 Group/Grade 1 winners including the legendary Frankel.

The breeding pattern has come up trumps again with two of Hveger's sons by Galileo, the Aidan O'Brien-trained pair of Highland Reel and Idaho, giving their dam an extraordinary double by winning the Prince of Wales's Stakes and Hardwicke Stakes within three days of each other at the royal meeting.

Royal Ascot glory is nothing new for this family, as Hveger is a half-sister to Haradasun, the Australian-bred son of Fusaichi Pegasus who won the Queen Anne Stakes for O'Brien in 2008, while Starspangledbanner, a son of Choisir whose granddam is a half-sister to Hveger's dam Circles Of Gold, landed the Golden Jubilee Stakes for O'Brien in 2010.

Starspangledbanner brought more Royal Ascot glory for the family when his first crop of two-year-olds, decimated in number because of his subfertility, yielded Coventry Stakes winner The Wow Signal and Queen Mary Stakes scorer Anthem Alexander in 2014.