Jamie Spencer enjoying life off the hamster wheel and keen on Phoenix Of Spain

It may come as a surprise, but if Tattersalls Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Phoenix Of Spain follows up in the St James's Palace Stakes on Tuesday he will be a first British Group 1 winner for Jamie Spencer since he won the Ascot Gold Cup on Fame And Glory eight years ago.

It would probably have been a very different story had Spencer not lost his Qatar Racing retainer abruptly in 2014, so he would be excused an element of 'it should have been me' when Oisin Murphy steered their flagship Roaring Lion to four successive Group 1 wins last year, but not a bit of it.

Life has had its ups and downs, that's for sure, but right now it's good for the gifted 39-year-old, for whom Phoenix Of Spain was a seventh Classic winner in a career that first hit the headlines when he took the Irish 1,000 Guineas on Tarascon in 1998 as a 17-year-old apprentice with fewer than 40 winners on the board.